A God Or A Ghost

So finally the 200 has been breached in the odi’s. I am not surprised that Tendulkar was the one who did it. Before you continue reading this post let me warn you that I am not a Sachin fan. I admire him for his passion for the game. He still likes his job and excels in it even after twenty years. I find it difficult to keep the love going after 6 yrs. There is many a lesson to learn from him. But let’s keep it for some other day. This post is more on the evolution of the batting in the LOI form of cricket.
Many batsmen have threatened to breach 200 runs mark, but perhaps got too greedy reaching it. Most recently sehwag and dilshan threatened to breach it in the same match. The advent of T20 has pushed the scoring rates to a new high. But what has made the feat achievable is the powerplays and mandatory changing of the ball after 35th over. The bats have been getting better but still it was difficult to maintain the tempo for 50 overs as the balls used to get softer and hitting 4s and 6s with tired limbs was not easy.
If we study the history of the limited overs game, In the first 20 years only 3 men managed to breach the 150 runs mark a total of 4 times. Twice by that great man Viv Richards, once by Kapil Dev and Glenn Turner. These are remarkable innnings as these were before the era of fielding restrictions, helmets, power-plays front foot no balls, strict leg side wides rules, restriction on bouncers etc.
The 1992 was the dawn of a new era as the 15 over field restrictions was introduced.
However it was not until 1996 that powerhitting caught up. In the next few years the 150 mark was routinely breached, till the bowlers started catching up. The team scores continued to rise but the individual scores started seeing a bit of a slump.
Then came the T20s, power-plays and the ball change rules. These changes have removed the bowlers totally out of the equation. These along with ever shortening length of boundaries have removed any challenge whatsoever the batsman had. Only obstacle a LOI batsman has thesedays is boredom.
Technology is advancing in all sports, but so is the human effort. Bolt still has to run 100m’s. Better shoes and tracks help him, but he still is a cut above the rest.
We love the nadal/federer rivalry for the contest, the rallies. It would have been boring if they had been indulging in a slugfest of aces. Similarly in football people love goals. But we don't remove the defenders and goal keepers and have 90 mins of free kicks and penalty shootout.

I don’t understand these craze for feeding more 4s and 6s. A six used to be thrilling as we never knew till the last moment if it was a six or the batsman was out. These days the moment a ball is hit in air the only thrill is if the ball has been hit out of the stadium or not. Perhaps we should bring the original 6 rule. Award 6 runs only for balls hit out of the ground. Not an impossible feat. I love the game. And want to keep on loving it. But for that, the contest should return back. A few more years of such ghastly innings I am off from this nonsense for ever.