How many people remember that.....?

Entertainment Cricket and Other Sports
21

The 80s was the decade when one-day cricket became a staple of the cricket diet. Slow, steady starts, wickets in hand and a crescendo in the last 10 overs. Once the chasing team’s asking rate got above the six runs per over figure, Richie Benaud pronounced many a solemn death. Today, that would be a stroll to the finish line.

The bowling seemed high quality without being memorable. West Indies had their usual production line of fearsome quicks but there seemed to be an awful lot of good medium-pace attacks around. Bob Willis was quick enough at times, Craig McDermott had good wheels and Wasim Akram was freakish but I can’t remember being captivated by anyone in particular. The spin-bowling stocks were particularly uninspiring with lots of steady, reliable tweakers but very little in the way of flair. Abdul Qadir was the obvious exception and his legacy still lives today.

Australia were certainly a mediocre team of battlers for much of that decade, especially after the retirement of the Holy Trinity (Greg Chappell, Dennis Lillee and Rod Marsh) until we saw a glimpse of what the 90s had to offer. Border was the rock they were built around but it should not be forgotten that this was also the decade when teams started employing a full-time coach (Bob Simpson for Australia). Twenty years later, we now have a ridiculous circus of support staff and computer boffins who require their own coach (the bus variety).

Source: CricInfo

Good comments by users following the article.
](http://blogs.cricinfo.com/diffstrokes/archives/2008/08/big_hair_big_deeds.php)

22

Re: How many people remember that.....?

Regarding Bradman, while its true that opposing teams did not have the luxury of video analysis, the argument also works the other way around. Today's batsmen can watch footage of their batting and iron out faults that might have crept in. Or study a bowlers action and plan out a strategy. Bradman did not have access to these facilities.

IMO what made Bradman truly great was that he was the one who set a standard. He did not have to make all those triple and double centuries. Even if he had an average of 50 he would still have been considered great. Yet he strove to achieve what was near to perfection.

23

Add to that the fact that boundaries are shorter these days!!

24

Well i think u r simply giving too much credit too youngesters and taking too much away from Legends, Dont forget todays generation has learned alot from those, And a student might be better than a teacher but u must remember the teacher.

Also you can agrue abt giving them a rest day but GIVE THEM CREDIT FOR FINISHING GAME IN 4 DAYS ... I mean we got draws back then and we still do, yet CREDIT GOES TO BOWLERS WHO WERE ABLE TO FINISH GAME IN 4 days. and if bowlers back then were better than offcourse that makes the batsmen who played em better.

In simple words, Players like Bradman, Lilly, Sobers, Zaheer Abbas, Sarfraz Imran, Akram and much more have proved them sleves and youngsters still have too... You are comparing Yuvraj singh with sobers ?? offcourse Yuvraj singh is a good batsmen but he didnt even make his place in test cricket yet ?? on the other hand Sobers i considered best batsman for any type of cricket. He was ideal for Test and ODI's and no doubt he wud make his place in T20 if he was arnd.

Saying That bowlers back then were much better... still we have names like bradman and Vivan Richards who didnt only sruvive those bowlers but dominated them ,,,, so just coz someone plays five days instead of four, doesnt make youngsters better they have to work hard to proof themselves, like LARA and INZI.

wasalam
Aqeel