After two consecutive run fests, is it time to say goodbye to bowlers?

When South Africa successfully chased Australia’s 434 in 2005, people were praising the brilliance of that chase. True, the chase was outstanding, but it started a trend for the shorter format of the game.  T20 cricket had recently made its debut and it was a time when cricket leagues had not even been considered.

Yesterday, when India scored 380 runs in the second ODI against England at Cuttack, a traditionalist would believe that India had the match won, but England gave the crowd a scare and nearly pulled off chasing the total. Luckily, for the Men in Blue, England fell 15 runs short.

Twelve years later, anything below 300 is subpar irrespective of where you play. Virat Kohli proved that in 2012 when he chased 321 in 36.4 overs against Sri Lanka. The chase could have been done in 50 overs, but India needed to have the necessary net run rate to qualify for the finals.

While I take nothing away from Kohli or any other batsman of the modern age, there is a fundamental question that I ask. Why do people want to become bowlers when the game is primarily a batsman’s game?

Recently, former Pakistani batsman Mohammad Yousuf in an interview said that while he loved watching Kohli bat, he felt that Sachin Tendulkar was a batter batsman.  “I played a lot against Tendulkar and he was a master class and produced match winning knocks many a times. I don’t think Kohli is facing the same quality bowlers or opposition,” Yousuf was quoted as saying.

A factor that has helped batsmen in the past five years are cricket bat dimensions. In 2014, the MCC World Cricket Committee had discussed the issue at length, debating the benefit of a greater number of boundaries for television viewers against the fairness of the balance between bat and ball. At that point, the members couldn't reach consensus, and the law was left as it was.  But in the end of December 2016, the committee recommended a new limit of 40 millimetres for the edge of the bat, and 67 millimetres to the spine. Currently, the width of the bat is 35-40 mm and at times even goes up to 60 mm, which gives batsmen an unfair advantage. This probably enabled Kohli to play this the first ODI against England in Pune

Recently former Australia captain and commentator Ian Chappell wrote a piece where he argued with another Australia captain Ricky Ponting’s demand to reduce the thickness of bats only in Test cricket. “One of the primary duties of cricket's lawmakers is to maintain a balance - like an evenly weighted pair of scales - between batsmen and bowlers. When the balance is too much in favour of batsmen, it usually results in disgruntled bowlers fighting back by resorting to such drastic tactics as chucking or Bodyline,” Chappell wrote in his column.

There have been arguments that bowlers benefit from the DRS, but in my opinion the DRS is a two-way system. Batsmen can review a decision, so it’s not just a feature in the game that favours the bowler. 

The unfortunate bit is that the perception of the game is that audiences come to watch batsmen and not bowlers. They generally prefer watching sixes rather than a bowler takes a hat-trick. Sure, there are a few individuals who prefer big hitting, but as Chappell so eloquently put in his column, that he likened six-craving fans to those who frequent an establishment because the waitresses are topless. “When another bar opens down the road with waitresses who are even more skimpily attired, they quickly shift their patronage.”