Bat or Bowl ?

Cricket is all about scoring runs?

These days cricket has become the Batsman's game. Flat pitches, super power shots, power plays, shorter boundaries, short versions like T20, IPL and what not?

In short everything is favoring the batsman. Crowd too wants to see players hitting 6s and 4s. They are happy when some bowlers slog the opponents out. That's the reason why now a day we see lot of all rounder’s in the teams then earlier. Even sponsors in various tournaments count no.of 6s or 4s or max runs scored by batsman to donate equivalent amount to charity.  Teams prefer playing with extra batsman then an extra bowler in playing 11. Batsman has lot many options of choosing the type of bat they want heavy, light, long-short handle, various types of grips and what not, but I hardly remember ball being changed to help bowlers to get wickets like extra shine or may be extra rough on one side etc. Moreover, after 35 over’s balls get changed, so batsman get harder ball to hit out of the park.

Once 275 was considered to be the best fitting score to defend. But now days even after scoring 350 teams are not sure or confident of there win.

Even for Man of the match award Batsman are given more preference then the Bowlers. While selecting team for the match, we always focus to select batsman first then the bowlers. This is not just the case in international cricket. Just see forums and stats people are hungry for more runs. You will see in forum people searching for batsman or all rounder. I hardly saw request for searching for fielder or bowler :).

Consider this example :

A Batsman scoring 50s and 100s are considered more valuable while the whole team score could be around 300 i.e. just 1/3 or 33% of the runs scored. But for bowlers to be on outstanding performance we expect from him 5 wickets or so which is 50% of the total wickets.

In our tournament too, avg. team score is roughly around 75 runs. Batsman on an avg. scoring more than 15-20 runs is considered to be great contribution and fetches him MOM most of the time. 15-20 out of 75 i.e. 20-25% of contribution.

While how many time do you remember bowler with 2-3 wickets has been fetched MOM i.e. 20-30% of total contribution.

Best part when Batsman crosses the boundary line it’s given a maximum. While bowler crosses the line it’s declared as wide or no ball what an irony ;). Batsman has 360 degree and 180 yards of circle where he can play his shots, while bowler is restricted just 22 yards and 3 feet from stumps to bowl and get his target out. As per me more pressure is on Bowler than on Batsman during the game. Lets support our bowler and get more competitive games in coming play off.

Today being Friday, Thought of changing the CricFantasy team after a long break. Browsed through various stats and end up writing this article. In CricFantasy too its clearly evident that CricFantasy too supports Batsman than the bowler ;) 

Hopefully this will help me create team for next season. Create team with all Batsman than the Bowlers :D . Rather select Batsman who can Bowl.

Top 3 Batsman and their CricFantasy Points

1 Rajat Sar Spartans CC 8 177 --- 378

2 Ajit Apte Yuva XI 6 149 --- 320

 3 Raghav Swaminathan Weekenders 8 265

Top 3 Bolwers and their CricFantasy Points

1 Badal Chhatbar Spartans CC 8 16 --- 199

2 Kottureshswamy Hiremath Darkhorse CC 8 16 --- 186

3 Prasad Vaddi Hurricanes 8 15 ---  200

This are my views and thoughts about cricket in today's world. Some how I miss to see fast bowlers of old times like Ambrose, Walsh, Wasim Akram, Waqar, McGrath, Kapildev, Srinath, Vass  and many more. I am pretty sure there were lot many other fast great bowlers before that but I have seen these guys as I grew up.

Keep Smiling Always
Dharme
Bhavnavho ko samjo ... Grammar mein mat uljo :)