When I was an school going student, we used to play in our backyard which was barely the length of a pitch, 22 yards, wall on the back as stumps, and walls on either side, 20ft either side of the pitch. There were 8 of us. Any ball hitting the walls were counted as boundaries. The scores were in the range of 250-300 every innings as it was ridiculously simple to hit boundaries.
I was reminded of this when I saw the India-Srilanka one dayer in Rajkot today. Everyone was hailing it as a great match, what with a total of 820 plus runs being scored. But for me, it was silly cricket. There is no fun in seeing the batsmen tonk hapless bowlers all over the place. The whole fun of watching cricket is the tussle between the bat and the ball. Here the bowlers were reduced to tears.
Over the years, the ICC has altered the rule many a time to favour the batsman. For example, why should the number of overs be limited to a bowler, while batsmen can play the whole 50 overs if he can? Limiting the bouncer to one per over is ridiculous. Why are we not talking about batsmen allowed to lift the ball over the infield only once in an over? Take the case of leg side wides. Now anything pitching even 1cm outside the leg stump is a wide. Bowlers should be given more leeway on the leg side. Today's batsmen improvise a lot. Let him take a bit more risk to play the ball pitched outside leg. And the boundaries are ridiculously short on at 65 tears, much like my backyard. Recently I was watching a re run of the 1985 Benson & Hedges World Championship in Sydney. L Sivaramakrishnan was the main weapon as a leg spinner. And he was the kingpin because the boundaries were huge. With todays modern bat, which has sweet spot all over the place, even top edges clear the short boundaries with ease. And it is fun to see batsmen running 3's and even 4's in the huge Australian grounds of the past.
I suggest the following changes,
Allow bowlers to bowl unlimitedly. ( The new rule change states that 3 bowlers can bowl a maximum of 12 overs, though this is yet to be tried ). Or alternatively, allow a bowler to bowl one additional over for every wicket he takes. This will give him an incentive to take wickets.
Increase the boundary to the old 100 yards or at least 85 yards.
First power play to be limited to 8 overs. Bowling power play of 5 overs not to be taken before the 30th over. This will make the middle overs more interesting. Batting powerplay to remain as it is.
Increase the wide line outside the legstump to cover an additional 3 stumps.
Free hit to be banished. A person cannot be punished twice for the same crime. Increase the penalty runs for no ball to 2.
Revise the LBW law. This ridiculous issue of not giving out LBW when the ball pitches outside the leg stump has to be dealt with. The only question to be asked is 'Would the ball have hit the stumps?'
This might sound silly. But I would recommend scrapping day and night matches and playing ODI's during day with whites and red ball. The red cherry gives more options, wont have to be replaced at the 33 over mark and will do more. The white ball hardly does anything.
Reduce the matches to 40 overs. This is more than sufficient to get a good game of cricket
