Too much cricket affecting fast bowlers - Donald

Comments: 6 

Posted by   on (August 25 2010, 02:24 AM GMT)

I am also agreeing with Donald, and the same thing Imran Khan was saying from last few years, but I can't understand why countries afraid to make fast pitches. What happened it we have 20 wickets in first 2 days, they still have 3 days to makeup the loss. Most importantly it more fascinating to see the even battle b/w the bat & bowl, rather then 500+ scores. And after all the protective things for the batsmen why you need a dump pitch. Please make fast pitches or atleast one end of the Pitch should be fast. There is no better sight in the world cricket to see the cheers and roars of crowd behind the true FAST bowler. We want to see more Garners, Imrans, Lilly, Holding, Wasim, Shoaib, Lee etc, I like to name Zahid but unfortunately he didn't played that much. The standard of pitches nowadays even tailenders has avg. in high 30s. Save Fast bowlers, make good pitches preserve the passion....

Posted by knowledge_eater on (August 25 2010, 00:17 AM GMT)

No wonder Donald is one of my fav. bowler, he is being honest and saying 1) "hey bowlers are playing almost more than twice as much as they use to" 2) bowlers are bowling in some crap pitches as well. Bowlers are not bad, but the conditions are bad. My points: Also, to be honest the competition to survive lone as a bowler in team have forced few bowlers to improve their batting and actually score lots of run and survive longer is also big factor that even devastating bowlers have problem of taking their wickets as well. Before there was so called Tail Phenomena. Like if you are tail batsman you suppose to struggle. Now, tails are sometimes bigger than Head. Before bowlers focus on bowling only, now they have to be great outfielder and decent wicket holder to lower order batsman. I don't mind this revolution but that means you must make even pitches tougher than before not even more flatter. I don't mind pitches that can go till last day 5, but as long as there is result.

Posted by wiiCricket on (August 24 2010, 16:55 PM GMT)

Build balance wickets for test matches. And build absolute roads for T20-ish.

Posted by   on (August 24 2010, 15:56 PM GMT)

Agreed neutral fan. I would take an Alan Border average of 50 over a Kallis, Ponting, Tendulkar avg of 55 any day. In fact the number of players who now average mid 50's is astounding. Just off the top of my head: Ponting, Kallis, Tendulkar, Hussey, Sehwag, Dravid, Jayawardena, Sangakkara (who in fact - as a pure batsman in tests where he has not worn the gloves averages a massive 77) and there are others. Im not saying these arent great batsmen - just that averages mean very little now. For me a top class test bowler averages around 25 - 30 now whereas in the past that was closer to 20.

Posted by RealWI on (August 24 2010, 15:15 PM GMT)

When Australia and South Africa were on top of the world with mediocre teams in the mid 1990's-2005 some had the audacity to compare those team with the dominant Australia of the 70's and WI team of the 80's. The flat pitches around the world are the work of the ICC who wanted to combat the fast bowling dominates of the WI. The rules were set up to protect inferior batsmen. One bouncer per over, the no-ball rule change, helmets, shorter boundary. What happen, inferior batmen like Pointing, KP, Jayawardene, Smith, etc could camp out on their front foot all day, while Sluggers like Gayle, Sehweg, Hayden, etc had enough time to adjust to the ball with little or on foot moments. The pitches have slow down but let's not give the ICC a past here. The ICC short-sighted attempt to stop WI resulted in long term damage to the game. We might never see the next generation of great past bowlers, but we will have plenty inferior batmen looking like Chappell and Richards. Time to watch SOCCER.

Posted by _NEUTRAL_Fan_ on (August 24 2010, 13:43 PM GMT)

I agree with Donald. The pithes have been garbage, just about every nation, even in Eng and Aus have at least 1-2 pitches that are too heavily batting skewed. The pitches in Sri Lanka, Ind,Pak and W.I. have been absolute roads and don't even favour spin, let alone any kind of pace. Thats why in the 80's-90's, you had to be a real good bat to avg. 50 with the bat and many good bowlers averaged well below 30. A bowler like Zaheer Khan, deserves be below 30, if not mid 20's with his avg. Let the batsmen keep the ODI stuff, it is high time for bowlers to get a better chance in tests. I want to see the ball beating the bat more often and I don't want to see runs scored at 4.5-5 runs an over in tests,its like ODI for 5 dys. So what if such scoring brings results in 5dys, its still not as good as a tough, close draw where a wicket looks possible almost every over and batsmen have to dig deep through tough situations. The draws between Eng n SA in SA were actually quite enthralling.