The imbalance in Cricket that no one talks about
Cricket, particularly the ODI & T20 versions of it, is heavily tilted in favour of the batsman. When analysts, commentators & fans discuss the growing imbalance between the bat and ball, they almost always talk about flat batting pitches, short boundaries, fast outfields, bigger & better bats,batsmen’s increased use of protection gear,fielding restrictions (with & without powerplay), little margin of error for bowlers (no balls & wides), batting techniques that put power ahead of elegance, unorthodox shots (switch hit, dilscoop etc) etc etc. They rarely talk about the limit on the number of overs a bowler can bowl in limited overs cricket.
While a batsman can theoretically play 100% of the 20 or 50 overs available, a blower can only bowl 4 out of 20 or 10 out of 50 overs. To me, this seems to be an injustice for bowlers.
When it comes to Test Cricket, a bowler can theoretically bowl 50% of the overs in a innings. So in theory a team needs only one or two good bowlers to win Test matches. But in ODIs & T20s, because of the quotas, teams need 5 or more bowlers. Of course if a team has 1 or 2 good bowlers who can take wickets at will, it can get by without the need for good 3rd, 4th & 5th bowlers. But it seldom happens that way as we have seen on numerous occasions with teams like Deccan Chargers where a Dale Steyn’s brilliance will not be backed adequately by the other bowlers. Clever batsmen will always play it safe against the better bowlers and target the lesser bowlers.
This is what happened in yesterday’s IPL match between RCB and PWI. Chris Gayle was on fire and was hitting sixes at will. He scored 28 runs in an over from Marsh, 29 in an over from Finch & 28 in an over from Murtaza. So those 18 balls gave Gayle 87 runs! RCB finished their innings at 263/5 from the alloted 20 overs, which was a record. Amid all of this frenzied hitting, Luke Wright bowled 4 overs for 26 runs, including 13 balls (6 dot balls) to Gayle. Bhuvneshwar Kumar bowled a splendid spell of 3 overs with the new ball, conceding only 8 runs (he mostly bowled to Dilshan).
Now, imagine a scenario where Finch, the PWI captain had the chance to use Bhuvneshwar to bowl another 2 overs in his opening spell or get Luke Wright to bowl another over or two in the middle overs. Bhuvneshwar might have dismissed Gayle, Wright might have limited RCB’s score to around 200. This is why I feel it is not right to limit the bowler to a fixed quota of overs when a batsman can play throughout the innings.
To correct this, either the bowlers should be allowed to bowl more overs or the batsmen should be allowed to bat for only a fixed quota of balls. So in a T20, bowlers can bowl a maximum of 6 overs each or every batsman can only face a maximum of 48 balls. I would prefer to have both. We can then have more overs from better bowlers and more attacking shots from batsmen when they near their quota. Better T20 cricket overall.
It’s not that nothing is being done to correct this. Allowing one or two bowlers to bowl more overs than the quota limit is being tried out in domestic limited over tournaments in Australia, England & India. But the ICC has to do something about this soon. Analysts, commentators, current and past players should discussed it widely. After all, Cricket can’t be just a batsman’s game.
