{"id":2752,"date":"2016-06-02T14:44:36","date_gmt":"2016-06-02T09:14:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/13.201.39.237\/?p=2752"},"modified":"2016-06-02T14:44:36","modified_gmt":"2016-06-02T09:14:36","slug":"cricket-england-australia-bowling","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/13.207.105.184\/?p=2752","title":{"rendered":"Does England\u2019s 481 Against Australia Sound the Death Knell for Bowling?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\n\nW<\/span>hen I played Brian Lara International Cricket<\/a> on our Pentium 4 PC as a kid, I was an addict who had figured the game out \u2013 quite the way Nirav Modi<\/a> had figured out the loopholes in the banking system. If the computer bowled a good length delivery outside the off stump, I had to move my batsman a bit, press Shift + Right Mouse Button (RMB) and it would go for a six. Every single time. Perhaps it was a game bug but I couldn\u2019t care less as I smashed 250 runs in 20 overs and became the gaming nerd of my society.\n\nTo put things in perspective, it was 1999 and these were humble times. A time when good batting line-ups would struggle to chase 250 runs in an ODI game.\n\nAs I watched England<\/a> take Australia to the cleaners at Nottingham yesterday, amassing 481 runs in a 50-over game, I realised that Codemasters, the developers of Brian Lara International Cricket, had actually made a prophecy all those years back. It wasn\u2019t a game bug after all. Every good length ball outside the off stump was quite literally disappearing out of the ground<\/a>. Only, this time around, it wasn\u2019t a video game. This was real life and the Australian bowlers couldn\u2019t just throw a fit and press \u201cQuit Game\u201d.\n\nIn a recent episode<\/a> of the web show Breakfast With Champions<\/em>, Afghan sensation Rashid Khan<\/a> narrated a funny story where he cheekily asked a pitch curator during the IPL to prepare a turning track. The curator told him, \u201cIf I make a bowling track, no one will come to watch the game.\u201d The quick-witted Rashid immediately shot back, \u201cIf you make a batting track, I won\u2019t be able to come next year.\u201d They both had a good laugh about it but the story captured the popular sentiment quite aptly: Bowlers don\u2019t matter, everyone just wants to see big runs scored.\n\nCricket is no longer a contest between bat and ball. Remember the old days when tours were promoted as a contest between Imran and Gavaskar, Sachin<\/a> and Warne, Lara and Murali? Today, cricket is a contest between my batsman and your batsman. It\u2019s a dick-measuring contest. If you can score 350, I can score 351. If you can score 400, I can score 401. It\u2019s Virat Kohli vs Steve Smith<\/a> vs Joe Root vs Kane Williamson. Bowlers do not exist to create their own legacies, they merely exist as a hindrance to a batsman\u2019s legacy.\n\nThe assault on bowling has been institutional and relentless. To paraphrase the poetic brilliance of German Lutheran pastor Martin Niem\u00f6ller<\/a>:\n\nFirst, they changed the fielding restrictions, and I didn\u2019t speak out. Because I wanted to see more runs.<\/em>\n\nThen, they allowed bigger, better, wider bats and I didn\u2019t speak out. Because I wanted to see more runs.<\/em>\n\nThen, they invented the T20 format with shorter boundaries, flat tracks and I didn\u2019t speak out. Because I wanted to see more runs.<\/em>\n\nThen, they started penalising bowlers with free hits and I didn\u2019t speak out. Because I wanted to see more runs.<\/em>\n\nThen, there were almost 500 runs scored in an ODI with no one left to speak for the bowlers.<\/em>\n\nThe ICC<\/a> would quite simply argue that it is giving the fans what they want. If people love Race 3<\/em><\/a>, Bollywood will keep making Race-like movies. If people want to see fours and sixes, fuck the bowlers, we\u2019ll give you fours and sixes. It is a beautiful advertisement for the World Cup to be held in England next year. Come to the stadiums, pay for a ticket, we promise a run feast. As for the bowling, we\u2019ll get cement tracks or replace humans with AI machines<\/a> if we have to.\n
Today, cricket is a contest between my batsman and your batsman. It\u2019s a dick-measuring contest.<\/blockquote>\nEven though the ICC believes it\u2019s market demand and it is good for the game, let me try to argue otherwise. I might perhaps be in the minority<\/a>, but I\u2019m confident I\u2019ll get you on my side as time passes by. You see, flat tracks and run-scoring machines not only harm bowlers, but they also harm batsmen. Remember when scoring a Test hundred used to mean something? Now, it\u2019s merely a statistic. You had to grit it out in the morning session, counter the early moving ball, and negate spine with sturdy technique.\n\nTest hundreds are now like MBAs<\/a>: Everyone has one and it\u2019s too easy to get, and so it has now ceased to mean anything. Less than a decade back, it was astonishing when a batsman scored 150+ for the first time in an ODI. And then it started happening every other week. A new Taimur Ali Khan<\/a> picture gets more eyeballs than a 150 in an ODI.\n\nSoon, 200 will be the new normal, or even 250 perhaps. But cricket as a sport is losing its essence as the audience is normalised to more and more runs.\n\nWhen you think of exciting moments in cricket, you think of Sachin<\/a> hitting Shoaib for a six over third man and then Shoaib knocking him over with a bouncer. You think of Shane Watson trying to ride it out against Wahab Riaz on a pacey wicket, or Mitchell Johnson and Kevin Pietersen going hard at each other in the Ashes<\/a>. The reason these battles stick in our memory is because there was an air of unpredictability about them, and that is what sport is about. Both the batsman and bowler had equal opportunity every single ball, and that made it exciting.\n\nKids of the future will grow up watching batsmanship being glorified disproportionately. Crowds love batsmen, sponsors love them; they will have the likes of Kohli<\/a> and Root and Williamson as role models to look up to.\n\nBut no bowling heroes, with quality dipping with every generation because of the balance being heavily skewed. My generation had Wasim, Waqar, Warne, Murali, Lee, and Walsh and it seems unlikely that the trend will be replicated over the years. Who wants to be a bowler in this environment? Especially, with every other ball sailing over your head for a maximum.\n\nAnd just like that, the fine and nuanced art of bowling will keep getting eroded, approaching its slow and timely death.\n\n\u201cBeta, batsman ban jao, bahut scope hai,\u201d a coach is telling a seven-year-old somewhere.\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Cricket is no longer a contest between bat and ball. It\u2019s Virat Kohli vs Steve Smith vs Joe Root vs Kane Williamson. Bowlers do not exist to create their own legacies, they merely exist as a hindrance to a batsman\u2019s legacy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":164,"featured_media":2753,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[394],"tags":[5567,1499,5568,5569,5570,5571,449,1269,5572,5573,5574,5575,1273,5576,5577,1274],"class_list":["post-2752","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports","tag-ashes","tag-australia","tag-bairstow","tag-batting","tag-bowling","tag-butler","tag-cricket","tag-england","tag-hales","tag-murali","tag-nottingham","tag-roy","tag-t20","tag-warne","tag-watson","tag-world-cup"],"yoast_head":"\nDoes England\u2019s 481 Against Australia Sound the Death Knell for Bowling?<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Cricket is no longer a contest between bat and ball. 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