From Pitch Battles to Batting Carnivals

To preserve the game's essence, a balance between bat and ball is crucial

KARACHI:

It's raining sixes, bowlers are lambs ready to be slaughtered, punch bags are being clobbered and torn away, and nails are being hammered fiercely into the ground. This is the plight of bowlers in the recent brand of T20 cricket, where you genuinely feel sorry for them.

It is negatively impacting the standard of cricket, making it more like baseball than the gentlemen's game of cricket that we know. The surge in six-hitting was highlighted by Sam Curran, who remarked after his team's high-scoring victory over Kolkata Knight Riders: "Cricket is turning into baseball, isn't it?"

It has to be an even playing field for bowlers and batters. This one-sided style of cricket, doesn’t clearly tell the goodness of batsmen and badness of bowlers. Bowlers are meant to be hammered and batsman are meant to rule the roost.

The IPL has transformed the face of T20 cricket in recent tournaments, with already 12 centuries made compared to the previous best of 8 centuries in IPL 2022. The number of sixes per match has reached 18, far surpassing the previous best in 2023. This illustrates the aggression and flamboyance that has entered the IPL.

This showiness in outlook is deliberately designed to attract the league and make it more of an entertainment like WWE rather than bringing the game to the next level of excellence.Sixes will become a part of land scape soon and fame of the game will be impacted bigtime.

The style of the game now showcases batting as more about ferocity rather than the artistry of the past when the ball was skilfully maneuvered through the fielders, making it a genuine pleasure to watch.

Placid tracks and smaller boundaries demotivate bowlers,disallowing them to be more miser is giving runs, making them unapologizing after embarrassing 10 runs an over.Bowlers beaten under 6 runs economy which made it a great spell, is a rarity now.

Leaving it as it is, allowing it to become prey to business giants and media magnates, will soon tarnish the game's charm and potentially shift player loyalties from longer and domestic formats. Players may opt for overnight monetary gains over the hard-fought battles of local leagues.

Younger generations are bred on big hitting and follow the T20 leagues. Then there's the older generation, who have grown up with batting originality are often dazed by slices of the modern game. This artificial extravaganza will certainlysoon undermine the services of batting genius of Sir Donald Bradman (AUS), WR Hammond (ENG), GS Sobers (WI) JB Hobbs (ENG) CL Walcott (WI), L Hutton (ENG) or Javed Miandad (PAK) who never played T20 but are revered as stalwarts of the game due to their extreme hard work, finesse, and flair.

Greats of the game should rack their brains and chalk out a plan to save cricket from becoming just a commercial commodity. There needs to be a striking balance between white and red ball cricket keeping it at the same time skillful that demands wizardry and artistry too, while not missing out on attraction of the game.