Like the players, who were taken through the roller-coaster ride of the World Twenty20 and have had to quickly adjust to the one-day format of the game.
BANGALORE: Like the players, who were taken through the roller-coaster ride of the World Twenty20 and have had to quickly adjust to the one-day format of the game, former Pakistan skipper turned commentator Rameez Raja too has lived through the blur to tell the story.
The India versus Australia game at the Chinnaswamy Stadium was the first one-day international to be played after the World T20 and Raja who was in South Africa was also in Bangalore.
“This is a no-brainer,” Raja tells DNA, talking about the experience of commentating during the first one-day international (ODI) in Bangalore. “I say that in comparison to the experience of doing commentary for the Twenty World Championship in South Africa,” he says.
“Commentating during T20 was very exciting. It kept all of us on our toes. There was no time for chatter. We had to be very focused. Not to say that it wasn’t fun. We had a great time and I thoroughly enjoyed it,” says the former Pakistan captain. “The cricket was fast.
Lots of boundaries and sixes and at no point did it get tedious.” Rameez stressed that the organizers have to be smart to keep ODIs as interesting as possible, because from an excitement point of view they are no match for Twenty20. “I think an over dose of T20 will kill ODIs. The organizers have to keep it in mind to pan out T20 fixtures.”
Here, he pointed out that while T20 may be exciting, it was lacking in depth. “See, T20 doesn’t have the drama of an ODI or a Test match for instance. In the longer versions of the game, the story unfolds gradually.
T20, like a short story, gets over too fast. In ODIs, there are ups and downs, all of it builds and builds and finally you have the climax or the anti-climax (if you may). Yes, for sheer entertainment value T20 wins hands down,” he says. He goes on to add that the organizers now must innovate and bring in newer concepts in ODIs to fight the threat from T20. “They have been trying different things like the super-subs, the power-plays etc.”
He then cheekily adds, “Maybe they should bring the dancers, like the ones they had in T20,” he says.
“Only problem is that when ODIs are held in the sub-continent, the dancers from here might not have the stamina to last 8 long hours, the duration of an ODI. Why do you think India and Pakistan did so well in T20. It doesn’t require much stamina,” he says.
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