This game obviously giving the lie...

...but in the round I think the pendulum has swung too far the batsman's way in the 50-over game. The white ball doesn't swing as much anyway and using two of them means you never get reverse.

I guess it's one of those things where some of us can watch a two-hour session of a Test, see relatively few runs scored and no wickets, and yet be absorbed by the contest between a skillful bowler making the ball sing and a skillful batsman reading and second-guessing and so on; and the yet-another-six-in-the-over T20 style.

I would quite like to see internationals play the popular club format where the team batting first has unlimited overs but chooses a declaration point, and league points are skewed towards positive results so you never really want to be batting too long unless you're a very weak team against a very strong one.

Posted By: Old Man, Jun 1, 13:45:42