“International Cricket will not have bowlers anymore”. This was announced by International Cricket Council (ICC) chief Mr Michael Bevan at Lords today after the historic Ashes showdown. He said that over the years, there has been nobody who wants to master the art of bowling and it’s very unfortunate that we will no longer get to see the likes of the great Shane Warne, Mutaiah Muralidaran, Curtley Ambrose, Michael Holding and so on. When asked about how cricket is going to be played in such a case, he said that they will be using Bowling Machines which can throw balls at high and variable speeds. They would be highly programmable in real time and can be controlled from the Dressing Room. It will be mainly based on Random Logic and the predictability of every successive ball will be very difficult. “With this, we expect to see the beginning of a new era in the way the game is played”, he said.
- The Wisden, January 2029
I am sure this is going to be the fate of cricket in not too distant future. The reason – cricket has over the decades become a game that increasingly favors batsmen. The entity called Bowler has literally been killed over the years. Murder would be an apt word, and it has been done very skillfully and artistically. Ask any kid who is interested in cricket, who he wants to be like and you are more likely to get a Sachin Tendulkar or a Virender Sehwag as an answer rather than a Harbhajan Singh or a Zaheer Khan. The reasons are obvious!
Gone are the days when bowlers were a feared lot. Those days, cricket was played over 5 days and more often than not ended without any result. That longer format of the game required the teams to get the opposition out twice, in order to forge a result. And to get the opposition out, you needed good bowlers, who could take 20 wickets in the stipulated time.
Then came the Limited Overs match which was played over a day. Initially it was a 60 overs-a-side affair, which was later revised to 50 overs-a-side. With the advent of this version of the game, the onus was on scoring runs to win the match and not on picking wickets. There was also a limit on the maximum number of overs that a bowler could bowl, thereby putting restrictions on the bowlers. But there were no restrictions on the maximum number of runs that a batsman could score in a match. 50 overs was still long enough and there have been enough instances in history when teams have bowled out the oppositions well before the stipulated number of overs.
Over the years, emphasis has always been laid on the batsmen. I do not remember any bowler getting the accolades or the praise that he deserves. For a simple example, take the case of India itself. How many batsmen have won the Arjuna award and how many bowlers have? It is not that we have not had bowlers of international repute. Kapil Dev held the record for the maximum number of wickets in Test Cricket for a long time. Anil Kumble, till he retired last year, was one of the most feared spinners on the International Arena. Harbhajan Singh also, can be very dangerous on his given day.
What is lacking though is the support from the game itself. This is partly because, it is more entertaining to watch the batsmen hit fours and sixes rather than watching bowlers pick wickets. The rules are very harsh on the bowlers. Earlier, the fielding restrictions were for 15 overs in the beginning. Then came the concept of power plays which made it 10 plus 5 plus 5, thereby giving the batsmen 5 more overs to go after the bowling. Later these rules were modified as to include a bowling power play and a batting power play where the batting team would choose which stretch of 5 overs they would like to go after the bowling. In short, there is no relief for the bowlers. The new concept of ‘free hit’ offered for a line no ball is another punishment for the bowlers. They are not allowed to bowl more than 2 bouncers in an over and bouncers over the head are immediately declared as wide. In short, bowling has become a thankless job. The boundaries have become smaller and smaller. Compare this to the restrictions on the batsmen – practically nothing. There have been a lot of innovations made in the bat in terms of the grips, size and shape, location of the sweet spots and so on but compare this to the ones made on the ball. Can we boast of a ball which could be swung the way one wanted? Is there a ball designed so that the bounce can be unpredictable for the batsman? Can there be a ball which could spin either way?
With the advent of an even shorter version of the game, the T20, it has virtually given a license to the batsmen to bludgeon the bowlers. There were days when 240s and 250s were considered a good score in Tests. Today, there have been instances where 200s have been comfortably chased down in a 20 over game. The pitches for the ODIs or the T20s have been so designed so that it helps only bowlers. And whenever there have been instances of pitches playing unpredictable, and suiting the bowlers, the match has been abandoned with ‘unfavorable playing conditions’ being cited as the reasons. That shows how helpless, bowlers have been.
Of course there have been instances where bowlers have shone in a batsmen’s game. What is important is to ensure that such performances are encouraged. It is important to make sure that the morale of bowlers as a community is down let down. A very recent example is the performance of Doug Bollinger of CSK in the recent T20 match against RR. He managed to return with figures of 17 for 1 off his stipulated 4 overs in a match where the opposition scored 223 in 20 overs. Such a performance should have won the MoM award. What’s the point of felicitating a batsman who has done well because all the factors are heavily loaded in his favor? It would rather make a lot of sense to honor a bowler who does exceptionally well when conditions are adverse.
Perhaps it is high time that suitable actions are taken now to ensure that the game is a level playing field for all the entities involved in the game. This may necessarily mean reviewing the way the game is played; change some rules with an attempt to facilitate equal opportunities for all. Or else, the hypothetical news excerpt may very well come true.