The changing dimensions in One Day Cricket

            The game of cricket was so exciting and thrilling in olden days; it was testing for batsmen to be on the crease and to score runs as well. It was more or less 50% favoring batsmen and 50% favoring bowlers. It was an equal affair in the gentlemen`s game; match winning batsmen were tested uniformly by match winning bowlers. But as the time elapsed, there is a certain evolution happened in this game of Cricket.

            Let’s take an ODI which played in 1996; where one particular team touched 300 run mark and felt relaxed as if they have won the 75% of the match. And indeed, it was a match winning total for many a years. But this is no longer existent. Following stats give you the perfect justification of what I am saying. We will analyze World Cups;

World Cup	Country Hosted	No of matches played	No of times 300 have scored
1992 World Cup:	Aus, NZL	39	2
1996 World Cup:	India, Pak, SL	38	4
1999 World Cup:	England, Wales, Scotland	42	3
2003 World Cup:	RSA, Kenya, Namibia	54	8
2007 World Cup:	West Indies	51	16
2011 World Cup:	India, SL, Ban	49	17
2015 World Cup:	Aus, NZL	26*	17*

      * Represents World Cup is in process.

After looking into the stats, in 2015 World Cup seventeen 300+ runs scored already and only half of the tournament is done, out of which three 400+ team runs scored as well. If the run making goes with the same pace, then tally will rise to whooping 32-34 300+ scores.

Why there is gradual increase in number of 300+ scores?

   1.   Powerplay: After the inclusion of Powerplay in 2007 World cup there is a tremendous increase in run scoring.

  2.    Batting friendly conditions: Australia is not the batting country, but still so many 300+ scores (3 400+), because of the flat wickets offered almost on all the grounds (also in New Zealand)

  3.   Little margin for error in Head height wide balls: Umpire is very strict about head height wide balls, which don’t allow the bowlers to ball bouncers too often

              4.     Fielding Restrictions: Before a year or so, there were 5 fielders protecting boundaries, this is also changed now. Now only 4 fielders are allowed to protect the boundary. And Australian grounds are so huge; running between the wickets are also increased.

Hence, if we compare the 2011 world up and ongoing 2015 world cup, there is a massive difference in run scoring; almost every match, a record is breaking, if not more. People obviously like this clobbering by bat as most of the public watches it for seeing batting. Great cricket pundits are reckoning some batsmen like Gayle, De Villers etc will score 300 alone in an ODI game in future.

I am afraid to say, these are not the good tactics for this game which should have equal rules favoring both Bowlers and Batsmen. Or else time will come when; all eleven members in the team will be batsmen and will not care about bowling.