After being bowled for a duck, W G Grace is reported to have said that the people had come to see him bat, not to see the bowler bowl. Cricket boards over the world appear to have adopted this as their guiding principle. | |
| For the last three to five years, high scoring matches in both versions of the game have become the norm. In one-dayers, scores of 280 and above are becoming common and in Tests several teams are routinely scoring over 400. This has been made possible because of extremely flat, batsman-friendly wickets. |
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| Naturally, they have prospered. The obverse, of course, is that bowlers have suffered, and how. Two questions therefore need to be asked: one, why are cricket authorities doing this, and what long-term consequence might it have on the game? |
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| The answer to the first question lies in the central outcome of high scoring matches. This is that, more often than not, the match goes the full length of 50 overs for each side. |
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| This is good for the spectators, of course, but even better for the television stations that buy the TV rights. Reason: truncated matches fetch that much less by way of advertisement revenue, and these days TV broadcast rights bring in much of the money for cricket. |
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| TV stations have thus acquired a huge vested interest in high-scoring matches and therefore flat wickets. Both make the matches last longer. It is interesting that when season tickets were introduced in the mid-1960s the reverse happened. |
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| TV not being there, local cricket authorities lost interest in making the matches last for five days and started under-preparing wickets because they had already got their money from the season tickets. |
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| As for the second question, the main long-term consequence will be an even further diminution of bowlers and bowling. |
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| For years they have toiled under several handicaps, such as the one-bouncer per over rule (two in Tests), the wide-ball rule, the over-the-shoulder no-ball rule, the fielding restriction rules, and so on. With ever flatter wickets now, the playing field has become even less level. |
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| In due course, if the contest is so uneven, the matches will become boring and eventually TV audiences will shrink "" even on the sub-continent and even for one-dayers. For Tests, they are already very low. |
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| What should be done? It is futile to think of removing TV from the driver's seat because that is where the money to sustain the game comes from. |
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| Indeed, in many ways, TV has rendered the game far more enjoyable with its close-ups, slow motion replays and several other innovations like the hawk-eye and the pitch map. |
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| The ideal solution would, of course, be to prepare wickets that, from time to time, help the bowlers as well. If that has its limits, some other measures such as increasing the number of fielders (but not the batsmen or bowlers) or relaxing the 15-over rule can be considered. |
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| The wide ball rule can be made less stringent on the leg side so that the run chase becomes less easy. The can't-see-so-change-the-ball rule can be abandoned. |
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| There could be many other solutions that experts could dream up. But one thing is for sure: unless the bowlers are given at least the ghost of a chance, the game will be strangled by its own excesses. |
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