finally a series, in which we can see the true value of batsmen of nowadays…and lo and behold each one of them is turning out to be a flat-track bully: give them a little bit of grass and bounce in the pitch and they all falter. As mentioned in the article, there hasn’t even been one century so far in the main tournament
It’s such a pity to see that despite all those high averages and centuries being scored, there is actually no batsman around now with the same skills as were shown by Richards, S Waugh and the likes: those were batsmen that could score on whatever pitch they play! :k:
I hope the WC can deliver such pitches as well. I enjoy an ODI more in which both team combined score less than 350 than an ODI in which one team scores 350+
i think the fault lies with icc to some extent. they are striving to market the sport in other regions like north america and mainland europe, and in doing so they have emphasized more on batting and making huge scores than on the bowling aspect. outcome of all this => batting wickets preferred in most cricket gnds.
Test match pitches prepared these days are generally helpful to bowlers and the better amongst these same batsmen who seem to be struggling in ICC trophy score runs on bowler friendly pitches. So, in my view, it is not the case that the abilities of these batsmen have been "exposed" in the ICC trophy.
As we all know, ODI is a different format than test cricket. In ODI, the batsmen cannot afford (for long) to leave alone the away swinging deliveries or to just bring bat and pad together and block the in swingers. They have to take risks against good fast (and spin) bowling and keep the scoreboard ticking. Scoring at a reasonable pace against good bowling on bowler friendly wickets is no easy task and thats why we saw most batsmen struggling. Also, just seeing batsmen stuggle for survival in a limited over contest is not exciting either.
The other extreme is dead tracks where scores of 300+ or even 350+ are chased. This may be entertaining for a few but I believe many true followers of the game do not enjoy this single sided battle where it is only a matter of which team has better batsmen than the opponents.
A middle ground is a track like that of Aus-India (last match in Mohali) which had something for everybody and hence there was a good contest between bat and ball.
