528-run game: Carnage in SRH vs RR reaffirms that saliva or not, IPL will remain ‘six fest’

Rajasthan Royals were sent out to chase a losing cause, but there was no slump in big hits. On the belter in Hyderabad, RR too struck 18 sixes to score 242 in response. Only two of SRH’s six bowlers had a sub-10 economy rate; even international-grade pacers like Mohammed Shami and Pat Cummins were not spared in the carnage.

Nothing seems to have changed from last season where an unprecedented 1260 sixes were hit. The season before that, pacer Yash Dayal, on a lifeless Ahmedabad track, was hit for five sixes in an over by Rinku Singh. Dayal became the butt of jokes, subject of memes. He couldn’t sleep, he had nightmares. The pacer on the cusp of an international call was pushed back in the queue – all for bowling on a typical IPL track where bowlers are sitting ducks.

A former international batsman turned IPL coach once shared his embarrassment when he was in the dugout watching batsmen from his team send every other ball out of the park. “My team was scoring runs but I felt terrible watching the bowler. You felt miserable as a fellow cricketer. This was a bowler who was to play for India in the coming days. I was seriously worried about him and the Indian team after that assault,” he said.

The batsman said that except for Chennai, there was not a single venue in the IPL where there was anything for bowlers. He says forget saliva, even shining the ball with vaseline will not make any difference to the unchallenged dream run for IPL batsmen.

Lively pitches and a major tweak to the ‘two ball’ rule in ODIs is the need of the hour. It won’t reduce white-ball cricket to being just a batsmen vs batsmen contest.

Two balls in ODIs with no help from the pitch is a recipe for disaster for bowlers. Relatively new balls – about 20 overs old each, around the 40th over mark – take reverse swing out of the picture. This defangs both pacers and spinners who like to bowl with older balls.

Go back in time, when ODIs were played with just one ball. Remember how Wasim Akram would have a slip in slog overs as he would dart the ball around. Recall Zaheer Khan’s mind-bending banana balls when he would be brought in after 40 overs. Now think of those many 300-plus matches at this month’s Champions Trophy games in Pakistan on the flat decks. Even Akram and Zaheer would have struggled to stop the run-flow, forget the present-day mediocre pacers.

New rules need of hour

An innovation that needs to be tried is to start with two balls for the first 30 overs with one of them getting rejected for the last 20. Here captains need to have the prerogative to choose which ball gets rejected. This way the fielding team will systematically and legally nurture the ball they would expect to reverse in the later part of the game.

This change will be more effective if the fielding restrictions rules are made humane for the bowlers. Between overs 41-50 is the final powerplay, a maximum of five fielders can be outside the 30-yard circle currently. That number needs to go up to 6. That would save cricket’s endangered species, the off-spinners. An extra fielder on the fence can save runs and offer an extra catching option. If these two changes are made, it’s ‘game on’ in every match.

But how will this change help Test cricket? The answer to this question lies in the observation made by an international bowler who played the 50-over Vijay Hazare domestic game this year after a long time. He said that all that the batsmen did during the game was to look at opportunities to score sixes. If a team was to score 6 runs per over, they would try and score a maximum. If that meant not connecting 5 balls, so be it.

What was more depressing for him was the reason for this bizarre ploy – the madness with no method. “The problem is everyone wants to be spotted by the IPL talent scouts. And what they are looking for are players who hit sixes, those who score an 18-ball 45 in the final overs,” he said.

This explains the death of white-ball cricketers who rotate strike, use their feet to play spinners, look to run singles while waiting for balls that can be hit for sixes. Not just ODIs, such versatile cricketers are needed for champion T20 sides.

Broadcasters must come on board

Laying out a slightly bowler-friendly pitch can tone down the advantage batsmen enjoy. But such conditions come with a risk that the IPL broadcasters aren’t willing to take. In case the weighing scale swings the bowlers’ way slightly more, it could turn out to be a low-scoring game, which as a rule impacts viewership numbers. Broadcasters are the ones who punt on cricket’s popularity, they are responsible for boards and players earning crores. Thus they call the shots, when they speak, the rest are obliged to listen.

So a common sight on the eve of IPL games are batsmen merely perfecting their swing. South African T20 master Heinrich Klaasen has turned ‘bowler bashing’ into a refined art. He hardly jogs for 40 metres and his gym training too is limited. His training methods are very focused. Bat swing and mental peace are his two primary worries.

Last season’s hero, KKR opener Sunil Narine, not once faced bowlers in the nets. He would take throwdowns and keep hitting sixes. He didn’t need to worry as all that he needed to do was use his hands to strike the ball that mostly travelled in a straight path. No real bounce, no spin, no big challenge.

The nuance of batting keeps fading with each IPL season. The occasional ‘save the bowler’ voices from stakeholders are mere lip service. If things don’t change on the ground, saliva or no saliva, batsmen will keep spitting sixes.

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