“Where is the match between bat and ball?” 811-run IND vs WI Guwahati ODI raises questions

KOCHI: 811 runs were scored in 93.3 overs in the second ODI between India and West Indies in Guwahati on a ridiculous day of batting as the bowlers turned mute spectators. Once such a match would be celebrated as a historic event. It’s just another game of cricket now. A play like this will not excite the audience; he lets them wear it down by watching another run-fest on a pitch that Ravi Shastri has commented on as a ‘national highway’.India captain Shubman Gill’s unbeaten 223 was amazing, his perfect timing, placement and voracious appetite hallmarks of his talent. Likewise, Rohit Sharma was easily on 101. West Indies also had three centurions. These batsmen needed opponents and found none. Not from the pitchers or the field.“Extremely boring game,” Madan Lal, former medium pacer and member of India’s 1983 World Cup winning team, told TOI.“Over 800 runs at the wicket of paat and there was absolutely nothing in it for the bowlers. Give the bowlers something to play with. Where is the match between the bat and the ball?” Lal watched.He reckons an ideal ODI should end around 280 per side. The kind of game that offers real competition and that viewers want to watch. For that to happen, he says, curators need to inject some life into these heartless wickets. “I don’t think it’s going to happen,” he wails.Former Delhi paceman Sanjiv Sharma credits the T20I proliferation trend and expects more teams to chase 400-plus scores in ODIs in the future.“In T20Is, we see teams chasing 200-plus scores. Batters carry that confidence into the 50-over format,” he said.Lal points out that the real problem with such run-fests is that they kill the quality of bowling in the long run. Sharma agreed. “Apart from Kuldeep (Yadav), neither side had a match-winner with the ball. India had a second-string attack, but what about West Indies? Their bowling was abysmal,” he added.One-day cricket is in an existential crisis in a calendar surplus with T20Is. The appeal of the 50-over game is that, unlike T20Is, it provides time to build, spin and breathe. Gill’s second double hundred in the format will go into the record books, but the uncontested record is mere arithmetic.