By Gaurang
July 12 2005

With all due respect to Sunny Gavaskar the chair of the ICC's technical committee who oversees the rule changes, the new rules implemented by the ICC in ODIs are quite silly. The biggest mistake is to have the substitute named before the toss. That is just so illogical that it beggars belief. I supported the substitute rule because I assumed like a "true" substitute as in Baseball it would be from a squad of several different players and the captain or manager could insert the player most likely to be useful in the situation. The requirement that the "Supersub", btw who came up with that stupid moniker be chosen before the toss means almost always the side winning the toss will have an advantage.

The spreading of the field restricted overs in two 5 over blocks in the last 40 overs just makes the milking phase unpredictable in terms of when it will occur, but still occur it must as the rule does nothing to eliminate that tedious period where defense is paramount, and batsmen often prefer to play out the danger men or not take undue risks so the dibbly dobbly bowlers are given a bowl.

The one rule change that would make an immediate positive impact on ODIs is a rule that says if a bowler takes a wicket, he gets more overs to bowl. This is how it is in Test cricket, and this is how it should be in ODIs too. This will encourage the real wicket takers like the Brett Lees and Shane Bonds to go all out with Aggressive intent and try and knock over a few wickets. It may also encourage captains to maintain aggressive Test match style fields in the face of an assault by the batsmen. One mistake and the bowler gets to bowl six more balls two mistakes and he gets a dozen more.

People watch cricket, any cricket, because of the fascination of watching the best batsmen and best bowlers take each other on. The duel is ageless and fascinating and will be ever thus. With this one rule change ODI cricket may see its first 8, 9 or 10 fors. What could be more exciting than seeing 16 searching and aggressive Glenn McGrath overs against top flight batsmen who have to take risks to get him away instead of 10 overs of McGrath against batsmen ready to wait him out and then 6 overs of Symonds in the milking phase?