Indian cricket must have been a bit bewildered today. They managed to bowl out the opposition twice for under 400. Yes, that's 20 wickets in 132 overs. Although the hapless West Indies may beg to differ, welcome back to REAL cricket!
The recent ODI series against Australia reached new heights in terms of consistent run-scoring but new depths when it comes to allowing bowlers a chance to demonstrate their art on a level playing field. Scrub that. One of the problems was that the playing field was too level. The pitch, anyway. The rest of the playing field could have resembled the Himalaya foothills for all it came into play in some of the matches. Nearly 3,600 runs in 11 innings makes for an average of around 330, incorporating an IPL-like 107 sixes.
However, for 330 to become the new 250 so quickly must go beyond specially prepared strips and bringing in the boundary rope. The men who excelled in the series were not surprising. Virat Kohli and George Bailey were magnificent, while Shikhar Dhawan, Glenn Maxwell and MS Dhoni also showed their class on more than one occasion. Then, of course there was Rohit Sharma's Bangalore masterclass and one-off century cameos from Shane Watson and James Faulkner. These are players who have sharpened their batting skills in the T20 era and, of these, only Dhoni has a lasting reputation in the Test format. Mind you, Sharma and Dhawan each have three-figure averages from their three matches between them!
Who remembers the bowlers from the ODI series? The only names that springs to mind are Mitch Johnson (for one good spell at Mohali) and Ishant Sharma (for his shocker in the same game). Nobody took ten wickets across the entire series; Ravi Ashwin's nine topped the table, albeit at 37 apiece while leaking a run a ball. Only this week's debut hero, Mohammed Shami, averaged under 30 of the main bowlers. Bhuvi Kumar and Xavier Doherty took a mere two wickets apiece and in terms of economy, Watson, Vinay Kumar and Faulkner each suffered a long-lasting pasting.
Following any other series, their places would be under serious threat. However, all you can do in the wake of such a run-fest is shrug your shoulders and hope that the next series will offer a fairer contest between bat and ball. I fear the worst, particularly in India. After all, when you have a limited-over batting order like that, the selectors and Dhoni can pretty much rely on hunting down every target set them and, if they lose the toss, put the game beyond most opponents.
Also, the series made fifty-over cricket major news around the world. Big scores make big headlines and these days big money, too. South Africa's victory over Pakistan today went way below the radar as the two sides could muster just seven sixes between them. Never mind the 43 fours which probably took more skill to achieve. The India-Aussie competition was certainly exciting, helped by circumstances leaving the final match as a winner-takes-all decider. Australia were no pushovers and will be genuine contenders come the next World Cup but I look forward more to ODIs in the MCG than Mohali and Newlands rather than Nagpur.
Should or could cricket's law-makers rewrite the books? All the tinkering with field restrictions and Powerplays have helped make mid-innings periods more lively but do they really help when the dice is loaded so much in the batsman's favour? Why not abolish such regulations altogether? Bowl to a 9-0 leg field? Then Kohli can just step inside and aim for the covers. If he misses, that's his problem! Place everyone on the boundary? Then nudge the ones and twos and score ten and over that way instead, with little chance of being caught!
It won't happen, of course. Modern innovations shouldn't be dispensed with on the evidence of five games in a single country. However, if ODIs continue to evolve into Fifty50 slugfests, then I will finally be convinced that the format has no future. And that really will be a shame.
