If Ryan Gosling – Time Magazine’s coolest person of the year in 2011 – were a one-day player, he’d be a finisher, reckons Rob Smyth. In the Guardian’s Spin blog, he investigates what makes the Bevans and Dhonis of the world tick. Bevan was a miracle of imperturbable efficiency; Christian Ryan wrote he had a “calculator for a brain and a tweezer for a bat”. In one sense Dhoni is Finisher 2.0, because he has added huge hitting to Bevan’s repertoire of deft boundaries and furious running between the…
It is often said that one-dayers are all about containment. Ian Chappell, writing in Mid Day as part of its World Cup pull-out, says that the best way to do that is by sending the batsman back to the pavilion. Attacking captaincy, he feels, is the way to go in the one-day format. There’s no doubt employing aggressive tactics is more difficult with the improvements to the modern bat. However, this is often used as an excuse by nervous captains and the good ones retain fielders to grab the mis-hits…
Neil Manthorp, writing for supersport.com, has had enough of one-day cricket in its current form and feels that all attempts to arrest its declining popularity have failed. There is hope, however, in the form of Richard Wood’s simple yet innovative proposal for multiple split-innings ‘5IVES’ cricket which is akin to the invention of the wheel in cricketing terms. Some of the greatest brains in the game have failed to arrest the decline in popularity of one-day cricket, both internationally and domestically. There have been flirtations and dabbling with playing conditions,…
Cricket Australia’s latest proposal to revitalise the one-day format would give one batsman from each team the opportunity to bat twice. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the proposal has come in for some stick from both players and the media. While Daniel Brettig of the AAP likes some of the other modifications – allowing two bouncers an over, for example – he says giving one batsman a second chance is just not cricket. However the prospect of one nominated “super striker” getting the chance to bat in the second bracket of overs having…
The 50-over format has merits and continues to be popular but we need fewer such games infused with greater context to ensure its survival, writes Mike Selvey in the Guardian. If fault there is in 50-over cricket, it lies not, for example, in the so-called boring middle overs, but in the number of ODIs that have been played over the past two decades, with little or no context, and the negative impression created by the continual quest for innovations: we are not happy with our product, seems to be the…
Written on June 24, 2010 | Posted in
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The latest attempt to inject life into the one-day format comes courtesy of Cricket Australia and involves split-innings of 20 overs each. The new format will be introduced in next season’s FR Cup, and if successful, could be used at the 2015 World Cup. However, not everyone is convinced. Writing in the Guardian, Andy Bull says split-innings is not the solution to one-day cricket’s problems. This is not a viable long-term solution for 50-over cricket’s ill health. With the exception of Tendulkar’s point that both teams have to bat in…
