ODI Evolution - Some thoughts

One Day International Cricket has evolved over the years. The latest in the evolution is the rule of super-sub. With this rule, effectively ODI is getting somewhat similar to Baseball (but, the time of course). However, this change was enforced by ICC – I am going to talk about the evolution through thinking. I think that the 1992 world cup was a huge evolutionary step in the One Day Game. World Cup 1992 final featured England and Pakistan in which Wasim Akram bowled a dream spell bowling second under the lights. He got the crucial breakthroughs of Alan Lamb and Chris Lewis with fantastic deliveries. For me, the most memorable part of the spell will be the instructions from Imran to Wasim - ‘Bowl your best and get wickets; Don’t worry about the extras’. That mantra from Imran is the biggest contribution of any player to One Day game in a long time. He was probably the first to recognize and succinctly put that One Day cricket is not just about restricting opposition to runs but, more about taking wickets. From that point, you will get to hear ‘couple of wickets here and this team is back in the game’ from *all* the commentators today. Funny, eh.

For the same reasons, India lost yesterday’s game – 5th ODI to Sri Lanka. They could not break the partnership between Dilshan and Russell Arnold. India did not have enough experience to figure out ways of breaking the partnership even though, the game was even till 35 overs of 2nd Innings. One more interesting point – I checked out multiple newspapers this morning and to my surprise, their reactions were not crisp. They probably did not know how to react to the situation – All the young Indian players were given a chance, they played reasonably well (but for the 5 overs during batting), the fielding was very good by Indian standards and bowlers bowled well for the most part. I suspect that the newspaper columnists did not know how to put this situation on paper. Even though it’s early days for Greg Chappell, this may be one of the best efforts to put together a process to groom players. I was impressed with Gambhir’s batting yesterday – his footwork was noteworthy. It was more impressive since he was coming back to ODI side after a long time.

Footnote: I am not overly excited about India’s performance in this series. However, given the way Indian team has performed over the last 2 years at home – I think we should enjoy this series victory.