Should he or shouldn’t he?

Watching England’s superb win last night I saw a team fulfilling it’s potential. I was particularly impressed by Eoin Morgan’s batting, a perfect example of what a genuine ‘finisher’ in the mould of Hussey and Dhoni can do for England.

I also saw a brilliant example of the steel of England’s captain Andrew Strauss. Graeme Smith, having already scored a ton, appeared to be struggling with some sort of hamstring problem and asked for a runner to be brought out. Strauss refused the request, and Smith seemed pretty pissed off about it at the time. Now I’m not sure if there will be debate over the rights and wrongs of this decision, cricket is supposed to be a gentleman’s sport after all and in the name of ‘being sporting’ some may think you should accede to this request.

But I would ask one question. What would Ricky Ponting do? The answer? Ricky Ponting would tell Smith to eff off if he thinks he’s getting a runner when he’s got cramp because he’s on 120 not out and has been batting for over 2 hours in the high veldt. And when the match could go either way and was swinging in South Africa’s favour.

And quite right he would be too. I’m all for sporting and gentlemanly conduct in cricket, it’s one of the reasons I love the game. But there comes a time in any sport where the match situation is so finely balanced that you have to be tough and say no, we’re here to win and to be honest, screw the opposition.

On and on and on and on and on...

As the ODI series between England and Australia drags interminably on into the latter half of September, I started thinking about the Test series in South Africa. However, I then looked at the calendar for England and realised we have 358 ODIs to play before the Test series starts. OK, so I exaggerate, but there is a lot of ODI stuff to get through before we get to the Tests, with Champions Trophy and then the ODI series versus South Africa.

Thing is, why am I not very excited about this? The Champions Trophy is like a mini world cup, this should be great. Why do I really not care? Well, partly it’s because England are terrible at this format of the game. I won’t go into all the whys and wherefores as there are many, but I cite 3 examples. 1) Jonathan Trott is the top limited- over run-scorer in the country, just got called up to the Test side and doesn’t play ODIs. 2) Adil Rashid played really well in the 1st ODI vs Australia, and then we dropped him supposedly to bolster the batting. The batter was Eoin Morgan. 3) The ECB is about to drop the last 50 over form of the game from the domestic calendar. Seriously, what on earth are they playing at?

However, one of the main reasons is that the 50 over has got a little bit, well, dull. The last world cup featured far too many meaningless matches. The middle overs drag, there’s countless tinkering around the margins of the game trying to inject some whiz-bang into a format that seems tired. So, what is to be done to the 50 over game?

What I’d go for is 50 overs of Test-style cricket. No fielding restrictions, no bowling restrictions. Essentially it would a short form Test match.

If you’ve got an on-fire bowler then you can use him as much as you want, and batters can’t try and ‘see out’ his allocation of overs. There’d be no need for the standard medium pacers coming on to bowl 5-6 overs just because someone needs to fill a 5-6 over slot, they’d be on because they’re the best option for conditions and circumstances. Captains would have far more flexibility over selection and bowling changes.

It would also remove the nonsense that is fielding restrictions. At the moment the opening bowling powerplays essentially mean you have fielding restrictions for the first 15 overs as it is extremely rare that captains hold back a powerplay for a different time. And the batting powerplay seems like a monumentally worthless addition to the game, I don’t think any captain has worked out when it’s best to play it (BTW, it’s when you’ve got 2 established batters on 30ish who are just about to start playing more expansive shots, it’s not for the last 5 overs when your 8 and 9 are in).

It would bring a nice tactical edge that reflects ‘proper’ cricket a bit more. It would also alleviate some of the formulaic nature of the 50 over format. Because there’s so much variation available in Test cricket then there is less chance of innings progressing in the standardised form that often occurs right now.

This would leave Twenty20 as the arena for all the tinkering with powerplays, bowling restrictions etc etc. Which feels like the natural place for all that jazz.