Boring ODI Cricket !

Says who ? Me ? Well yeah, sometimes and definitely in comparison to Test Cricket. Also more often than not, several meaningless tri-series and quadrangulars can get on the nerves. But here Peter May in his column on Cricket365.com talks about how he sometimes suddenly gets the feeling that he HATES ODI cricket.

But waking up on Saturday morning to hear the results from xxx and xxx, it occurred to me: I think I hate one-day cricket
...
Not only did England actually post a decent score and then defend it against superior
opposition, but New Zealand broke the record for the highest ever successful
chase and again gave hope to the rest of us that Australia are not quite the
force they were.

As things stand "phenomenal" events occured in ODI cricket last month. NZ chased down 331 to beat Australia, the highest total ever-chased but did it really register ?? Didn't it just get lost as one of those things ?? Contrast this to the occasion when we first took over the same record early in 1998 by beating Pakistan in the dark at Dacca ... boy I can still remember that Hrishikesh Kanitkar boundary.

He goes on:

Still, how many sixes can you see Afridi hit before wondering what’s on the news or how the Big Brother inmates are taking indignity to a new low? We are,
after all, the cricket community; we not Americans.

George W. Bush and co might be happy seeing ball after ball pummelled out of a stadium, open-mouthedly following the trajectory of another big hit. This is to reduce Afridi and Pietersen to the status of Mark McGuire, physical freak shows and hitting machines.

It always seemed to me that cricket was about rather more than that: it was about subtlety, patience, intelligence and grace. All four are handicaps rather than
strengths in ODI batting these days while bowlers may as well be replaced by
machines since their job is simply to provide boundary-fodder.

Exactly my sentiments. Not for nothing do I always maintain that people like VVS Laxman and Anil Kumble are just not good enough for this game rather than the other way round.

For some odd reason only the ICC chiefs and Sunil Gavaskar know, they seem to think that in ODI cricket all that people want to see are boundaries and sixes. As a result of this flawed thinking, they have done everything possible to make the bowlers look like third class citizens. They have created new regulations for the so-called betterment of the game which continue to favor the batters. And then they wonder why the game is getting even more boring. And then I suppose they will think of even more rules to favor the batters - consider this: The close catch-in fielders in the first ten overs were meant to allow the batsmen gaps to hit out anyway. Now if they think that these close catching fielders are in fact helping the bowlers pick up early wickets, they might just consider doing away with them. Of course, the sky is the limit when it comes to making the game more favorable for the batsmen.

Peter concludes with admirable precision as to what exactly needs to be done to arrest this trend - but will the big bosses at the ICC pay heed ?

There should be plenty fewer games and some power and respect given back to the bowlers before ODI cricket fatigue becomes all encompassing.
If not, ODI cricket is surely done-diddly-un for.