I spent the afternoon watching the highlights of the second innings of a test match. Windies vs Aussies, 1997-98 in australia. This is the 5th Test match of the once famous test series that used to happen every alternate year - The Sir Frank Worrell Trophy. Australia had by this time already won the trophy by defeating the invincible Windies in the west indies aided by the heroics of a certain Mr. Steve Waugh. In Australia on the return tour, West Indies has already lost the series by the time they came to the final test match. But the strength of the team, even though in decline, during this tour was simply amazing. A star studded team led by Courtney Walsh. A bowling line up that included Ambrose, Bishop and the eternal under-performer - Carl Hooper. Although by this time they did not have any strong opening batsman - no desmond haynes and no gordon greenidge. I guess in many ways, the lack of a solid opening pair is a sure sign of a team that is not very strong. Australia's golden age coincided with the strong pair of langer and hayden and I dare say India's biggest strength is their opening pair at present. This Windies team was largely the same team that reached the quarter finals of the 1996 world cup under Richie Richardson. Since then no real strong team has come from that quarter of the world.
Well the point I am trying to make is that back then in 1997 although there were a few clear front runners, the gap between the teams was not very high. all the teams used to play each other much more frequently whereas now it seems that the number of test series that happen has reduced dramatically and so has the quality. It has been quite a while since a test match of fabulous quality has been played. The second point is that a strong West indies team or any strong team filled with much-feared faster bowlers is also something that world cricket misses today. Is this the impact of the advent of better technology? Perhaps the time has come to make change to rules of the game to make the playing field more level. Like F1 has done a number of things to make races more driver dependent I think cricket needs to think long and hard and come up with some rules to make the contest between bat and ball more interesting. I think one of the first things to be done must be to standardise cricket bats and reduce the strength of bats. I am pretty sure that if you analyse the % of runs scored through sixes over the past few years there must be dramatic increase in that number. Something has changed in World Cricket that needs to be set right. The contest between bat and ball does not seem very even any more and more wickets seem to come from the batsmen making mistakes rather than the bowler creating the dismissal.
Let me sign off by posting a link which I am sure many of us will enjoy. A Curtly Ambrose Special Spell of 7 wickets for 1 run against the Aussies. This was a different series though.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a5G4pqb4nns
Is it just me or is it really true that Aus,SA, India and England are playing far more cricket than the rest of the world? And more against each other than elsewhere?
Saturday, April 11, 2009
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1 comments:
It is true that even in its decline in late 1980s and early 1990s, WI bowling attack was a fearsome force. Ambrose and Walsh obviously were recognised by all. Bishop too was an awesome fast bowler who never achieved greatness because of his injuries, very much like Shane Bond.
Even I have a feeling that England, India, SA and Australia playing more cricket than others. In another statistic, Aus has played a higher percentage of home tests than India and SA. That does skew the ranking and results.
But, I disagree about quality test matches not happening these days.
All 6 matches in Aus-SA series, both down under and in SA were great. India-Aus was good. One of SL-Bangladesh matches where Bangladesh nearly chases away a 500+ fourth innings score was also awesome.
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