It's a batsman's game!

Sourav Ganguly walks calmly down the wicket and hits a South African fast bowler out of the ground. The expression on the face of Lance Klusener or Makhaya Ntini is disbelieving sometimes, horrified at others, or plain resigned at yet other times. Gary Kirsten swats Srinath and Venkatesh Prasad's deliveries around like so many flies. Anil Kumble finds the edge, only for the ball to race to the boundary and make a mockery of good bowling, because it cannot be backed by a sensible field.

What is it about one-day cricket that transforms even an ordinary batsman into a demon six-hitter? It's the knowledge that no matter what horrendous sin you commit against the coaching manual, you have a good chance not only of surviving but of actually flourishing.

The crowd loves it. It bays for more blood as the poor lambs in bowlers' clothing are slaughtered by batsmen secure in the knowledge that their worst offences will go unpunished, with the laws of one-day cricket so firmly on their side and against their innocent victims.

What is it about one-day cricket that transforms even an ordinary batsman into a demon six-hitter? It's the knowledge that no matter what horrendous sin you commit against the coaching manual, you have a good chance not only of surviving but of actually flourishing. The bowler is under heavy pressure in trying to avoid bowling a wide or a bouncer. A batsman keeps whacking him through the offside; the bowler tries to tuck him up on the legstump, misses that target marginally, and the result is a wide. The same assailant plonks his foot down the pitch and repeatedly hits through the line, even daring to loft him for six, thanks to his highly evolved marvel of a bat rather than any superior stroke-production. The bowler tries to dig it in short, and the ball sails harmlessly over the batsman's shoulder, and it's a no-ball. While the batsman is constantly bolstered by the belief that he can get away with his worst excesses, the bowler is hampered all the time by fear and doubt that he will prove costly to his team. Every boundary, every no-ball, every wide adds to his tension.

It is this combination of confidence on the part of one and nerves on the part of another that makes one-day cricket such a batsman's game. All the legislator needs to do to make Test cricket a comparable spectacle is to alter the rules to allow each batsman three lives! You will then see equally unbelievable shots in Test cricket.

True, the bowler is now allowed one bouncer per over. The rider is that it's a no-ball if it goes over the batsman's head. During the last India-South Africa match, Geoffrey Boycott wondered aloud at the incongruity of a rule that would make it almost impossible to bowl a bouncer at a batsman of the height of Shiv Sunder Das without inviting a no-ball call.

Yet it cannot be denied that this amendment to the rules is the first step in a long while to tilt the balance ever so slightly in favour of the bowler. The question I ask is: How about going the whole hog and introducing a few innovations to arm the bowler with weaponry that will help him counter the humiliating domination by batsmen of the one-day version of cricket? Rules that will allow great bowlers to retain their dignity instead of being treated with contempt by even average batsmen?