Everything’s fair in love and cricket be it in case of the live game or in fantasy cricket. As a sport that hails from early as the 18th century the sport certainly has quite a number of rules and norms that each player should follow in order to maintain the fairness of the sport. From the length of the pitch to how a bowler should ball or a batsman should bat are all fixed. However, one area of batting where the batsman is at his liberty is his batting stance. And while fans pitch their support for the batsmen like Virat Kohli or Sir Don Bradman whose flawless batting made them world class heroes, there also is a significant number of batsmen who are famous for their unconventional and weird style of batting.
2. Kevin Pietersen Another modern-day batting great, Pietersen too had an unusual batting stance and technique. Whenever he came out to bat, Pietersen would stand at the crease with his feet wide apart from each other and played with a high backlit. The distance between his legs would be so much that a small-sized vehicle may easily pass through the gap. Further, he would keep shuffling and walking across the pitch, making it all the more difficult for the bowlers to bowl at him. 3. Lance Klusener Lance Klusener or Lance ‘Zulu’ Klusener was known for his unusual baseball-like batting stance. He would stand with his bat going as high as his shoulders and then clobber the ball with his club-like bat. The high back-lift had allowed him to hit freely. 4. Steve Smith Former Australian captain Steve Smith also had an unorthodox style for batting. He used to stand with a considerable gap separating his feet and used to keep swerving his bat. Moreover, he used to shuffle and walk across the line before playing a shot and used to get them executed, thanks to his high back-lift. His too much shuffling however used to irritate bowlers and viewers sometimes. But this is also the only batting style has made him the top batsman in the world across formats.
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India is a cricket worshiping nation. Nothing can be truer than this. So what is expected is that most of the innovations that have happened in cricket should have started from this nation. Unfortunately, this is not the case. The greatest of all changes that have happened in the game after centuries since its inception, the pink match ball has been embraced by many nations except for India who are still reluctant to let go of the iconic cherry red test ball. However, this is not the only thing that BCCI is known to be reluctant about. Many new aspects of international cricket , from Twenty20s Decision Review System, to embracing Test cricket under lights are still waiting for a whole-hearted welcome from the Indian Cricket Control board. This is quite unlikely for a country where Cricket is such a big deal that users of Fantasy cricket gaming apps range nowadays from a whopping number of 7-8 million and growing. More than many country’s gross population. So why this Pink Match Ball is still waiting for a clear green light, from the board to be able to enter the Indian cricket arena?
The problem lies, as a whole, with the reluctance of India to adopt the Day/Night test cricket. But if BCCI acting secretary Amitabh Chaudhary is to be believed, it could only a matter of time before India plays with the pink ball. Mr. Chaudhury had stated that he brought the issue up to the officials and decision would be taken. However, there are reports that also suggest that India won’t a play a day-night Test because it is not part of the World Test Championship. Either way, India playing a Test match under lights at home seems like a matter that would take time. India and Bangladesh are the only two teams that are yet to play a Test match under lights. Australia has played a day-night Test as part of their home season for the last three years at Adelaide – against New Zealand, South Africa and England – and would definitely want to play one against India. Understandably, India wouldn’t want their first pink-ball experience to be in the tricky conditions at Adelaide and will want to play one at home before. Especially when the players shoulders the responsibilities of the dreams and hopes of their fans. Having a good Stat and winning is important especially in an age like this when fans also engage directly in the game when they play fantasy cricket online through their own device. With Day/Night Test matches out of the question, the question that is concerning ardent cricket fans more that why is the nation so reluctant to adopt the Pink Ball. The pitch factor definitely plays in here. People are concerned about how the pink ball will behave in Indian conditions, with factors such as flatter pitches, dew factor and reliance on spinners. The Duleep Trophy in 2016-’17 and then in 2017-’18 were played under lights on an experimental basis and the pink ball didn’t get a vote of confidence from most players. Many Indian cricketers expressed that the pink ball offers very little assistance to the seamers and particularly becomes difficult to play with during under dew factor. The other problems with the ball, manufactured by Kookaburra at their factory in Melbourne, are the slower wear-and-tear which reduces swing, the visibility of the black seam, and how conducive it for spinners. The spin factor is something that can be worked upon on a turning track, but might not be effective on flatter ones, according to a batsman who played Duleep Trophy. Shannon Gill, the Head of Communications of Kookburra replied to this concern that the structural changes between the pink and red ball are made to ensure visibility under lights. Unfortunately, the structural changes are what keeping the ball from getting adopted by the Indian Cricketers. The Pink ball is also susceptible to wear and tear which affects its visibility once the ball gets covered with dirt and dust. Nevertheless, Gill is sanguine about the progress the pink ball is making and stated that players are just sceptical to adopt this new ball because they are usually used to playing with ball of a particular color and seam. It is just a adjustment phase he stated and before much time, we can the pink balls hitting our pitch. Cricket has always been a batsmen’s game where every bit of the rule in the game has been designed to favor the batsman and not the bowler. From the very beginning the game had been biased towards the batting side. It is actually because at the core of the cricket it works on the ‘reactive science’ and the thrill of the game comes from the reply that a batsman can give to the ball hurled at him. Moreover, just look at the cricket viewership, have you ever seen anyone, not hungry for runs from their favorite team. Scoring the biggest amount of runs is what anyone ever wants to see from their team. It’s simple, taking more wickets didn’t make anyone win any match if their batting side didn’t do their job properly. If I’m not wrong even during the colonial times when cricket was played in the colonies, the British clique only batted leaving the bowling part to the subjects. Batting was always seen superior to bowling as the thrill of the game came from how good the reply is from the batsman to the ball hurled at him by the bowler. Also, how often having you seen people getting on their feet jumping after a bowler delivers a dot ball or a wide; bowling is only celebrated when wicket is taken where is every boundaries of the batsmen are greeted with a huge excitement. Not to mention, in this age of virtual cricket tournaments, as conducted in the fantasy cricket sites, players are more concerned with choosing the right batsmen who score a huge run as that can fetch a bulk cash prize to the player who is there to play fantasy cricket . As compared with batsmen bowlers are less economical as scoring scope is limited. Therefore, in order to play online cricket games it is important to study the batsmen very thoroughly.
Every rule of cricket is based for the batsman’s benefit starting from a batting suitable pitch to boundary sizes and even restricting the bowler from delivering certain shots. Having said that however, this is also true that the hype has become real since the last 20 years to help the batsman to score more. Two decades back we could see batsmen coming into the pitch without much protective gears against the thrashing bowling attack of the bowlers. Overs were more and Test matches were important where batsman were not able to hit much boundaries against the prolonged attack of the bowlers. This however turned out to be less productive when it came to the viewership as test matches appeared kind of boring and people liked the pace of the ODI’s with limited overs where the thrill is real. Limited over matches became the haven for cricketers as Boundaries became smaller, pitch is made more flatter and batsmen friendly, bats have improved having better balance, better handles, and generally better shape aka ‘SUPERBATS’. Moreover, also came into the seen improved protective gears for the batsmen. So yes, indeed nowadays teams compete for more runs against each other thus making it a batsmen’s competition rather than being Bat Vs Ball. |
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