CRICKET RSS WORLD

From John van der Westhuizen, South Africa

We all know how the game has become batsman-friendly over the last twenty years or so. Well Lalit Modi and the IPL marketing ponytails have finally found a measure to counteract the trend.

Without going into too much detail - lets look at random developments of late (the last twenty years) which favour the batsmen in ODI and T20 cricket : Anything down leg is immediately called a wide - any batsmen's real or perceived weakness in keeping a ball down while playing off the pads can't be exploited because there is no margin for error in delivering the ball. Powerplay 1 - first ten overs where only two fielders are allowed outside the ring. As long as he can hit the ball fifty feet, an absolute hacker could get away with murder during this period quite regularly, because the fielders are all in the circle.