He definately came to this ipl with a point to prove both to his cricket board and to the franchises. Its quite unreal how good he is when hes focused.

His mis.hits go 10 meters back and when he middles balls they go out the stadium. Risk free hitting imo.

Good news - maybe the associates will get to play at the 2015 world cup
http://www.espncricinfo.com/ci-icc/c...ry/514661.html

Bad news - talking about possibility of day/night test matches
http://www.espncricinfo.com/ci-icc/c...ry/514700.html

Some if those suggesrions are Max Mosleyesque extreme and gimmicky..

Game is tilted in favour of batsmen? how about no bowling restrictions so every team just plays 3 bowlers max.

Day night test matches withba pink ball is also meh.

Lets leave the game as is and try some minor changes, the less gimmicks the better. People are not bored by the game of cricket they're bored by too much of it..

We were supposed to play Pakistan in a D/N Test in Adelaide about 2 years ago so I am suprised that it took so long to bring it back up.

12 teams, same format as the 1999 WC, with games more compacted with two games a day, and the Super Sixes stage.

Also, I wouldnt mind having a bottom sixes stage where the bottom two teams overall DONT directly qualify for the next tournament and instead have to qualify through the ICC WC qualifying event next time around.

I'm 100% for giving day/night test match cricket a try.

It reminds me of the idea of subs in one day cricket. For years people talked about it, and many commentators were all for it. Then they tried it and pretty much everyone hated it and it's not been discussed since. Just give the day/night thing a go. Personally, I'm fairly confident it will go down well but if not then it's not a huge disaster to have tried it.

I've not read the suggestions for the next world cup, but I don't mind teams having small breaks between group games. If they have to rest some bolwers for a couple of matches then so be it, and if the minnows are so weak then it shouldn't be too much of a problem anyway.

There is an alternative method for the outdated D/l now developed by an engineer from kerala.

http://www.espncricinfo.com/magazine...ry/513596.html

I hope they give it a fair trial because some of the dl simulations specially for t20 are lol bad, it gives too much importance to having wickets in hand even when teams are scoring at a woeful rate..

gayle gonna gayle, now leading scorer in IPL, with only half the games


34* off 10 balls so far

reminds me of this article

http://www.espncricinfo.com/magazine...ry/459431.html

after the Eng v WI farce in last year's T20 World Cup

Yea I have no idea how the ICC can continue using an outdated method in a format that didnt even exist when the formula was created. Duckworth lewis was never meant for t20 and they shouldve gotten rid of it long ago.

I've said it before but Saeed Ajmal has such a sick doosra. Tough to pick and actually turns a ****load.

Lolol this MI DC game is awesome...

Bowling a wide when the opposition needs 13 off 2 balls..

Regd WI v Pak.

When 2 awful batting sides go at it, I guess the one good thing is that a result is guaranteed..

Via @Cricinfo

There have been 14 lbws and 4 batsmen out bowled out of 30 dismissals so far in the WI v Pak Test. Should the fielders bother coming out?

Saeed Ajmal's taken his first ten-wicket haul in Tests at the age of 33. How many more will he have time for?

Shiv Chanderpaul is awesome though, grinding out every last possible run in a low scoring contest.

ICC committee should be forced to watch this and realise how exciting low scoring matches can be when bowlers have a chance of getting amongst the wickets, but batsmen who work hard can score runs. Run-fests are just boring as hell, and often don't produce results. They really need to work on how to restrict the batsmen with these railway sleeper bats. Perhaps re-introducing the back foot no ball rule would liven things up a bit. Also, use full size boundaries ffs, don't bring them in 20 yards.

possibly bat weight and size restrictions similar to how the swimming body cracked down on swimsuits recently? And yes, bigger ovals for sure...

i will never watch a game of cricket again if they start doing day night tests.

Day night tests will fail on a pure cricketing level, for a number of reasons. The regions of the world close enough to the equator that the change from bright day to dark night is fast enough to not interfere with visibility are invariably subject to problems with dew on the outfield after nightfall. D/N would never work in latitudes where there is a period of several hours where it gets dark gradually. That's why D/N limited overs cricket has been a relative flop here in England.

Sadly, I have less hope that D/N Tests will fail on a commercial level. I go to a lot of Test cricket, have done for nearly twenty years, and over the years the makeup of the crowd has changed; there has been a significant increase in the proportion of beery fools who haven't a clue what the game is about, but are pouring a lot of money into the ticket sales, beer tents and food concessions. If they can now go after work instead of taking a day from their annual leave then the problem might only get worse, as ticket prices go up because the beery fools can still afford them. Short term commercial gain is all that the likes of the ICC and the national boards are interested in. They fail to look at the long term health of the game.

It's a wonder any of the board members have children, when it is so financially prohibitive to do so. If they approached cricket with the same mindset as they approached starting a family, they'd realise that the money isn't the most important thing after all. What matters is the game.

DN makes sense in the subcontinent and West Indies. Test crowds are very low. It could spark interest back on the test game, atleast for the short term. I don't really get much of the hate for the idea. It's frustrating enough when matches in England struggle to get 90 overs a day because of bad light

It's bad enough when dew makes the ball is as slippery as a live salmon in a D/N one-dayer. To suffer it in the Test arena, the Rolls-Royce format of cricket, would be absurd, especially as a ball has to last 80 overs. The natural deterioration of the ball is a crucial element of the Test game, a factor significantly less relevant to ODIs.

What would spark interest in the Test game would be interesting matches. Far too many matches on the subcontinent are interminably dull highscoring draws with stupid scores like Team A scores 550/6d, Team B gets 520 in reply, and they finish day 5 with Team A on 250/2 in the second innings. There's zero chance of a result, so it's no wonder nobody watches it. Give the bowlers a frigging chance of getting a wicket, make it an actual contest, and you'll get the crowds coming in. It's not ****ing rocket science.


As for getting 90 overs in, once again it comes down to the priorities of the board. 90 overs in a day would be a lock if they started at 10am instead of 11am, and especially if they scrapped the idiotic drinks breaks in the middle of every session. Totally unnecessary except on the hottest of days, such breaks should be at the discretion of the umpires, not the mandate of bloody TV directors. Temperatures to such an excess that they require a 5 minute break every hour are certainly not a problem in most places.

Furthermore, to keep the day to a manageable length, if they introduced penalty runs for failing to bowl 30 overs in a complete session, at a rate of 6 runs per over not bowled, captains would soon get the message. Especially considering they would still have to bowl the overs anyway. Fining captains has been repeatedly proven to be wholly ineffective.

I agree that faster over rates and bowler friendly pitches are the obvious and easiest solution. But the ICC doesn't care about simple solutions or what's best for the game. Over rates are a total joke. No reason you can't bowl 18 overs/hr.

I think more than half of Tait's deliveries are no balls. Most of the time Ive seen him pick up wickets they've been disallowed. Optimal strategy while batting against him should be to treat every ball like a free hit..

Well played West Indies, their first win in a Test match in over two years. Somewhat of a collapse from Pakistan though, 135/4 chasing 219, before losing their last six wickets for just 43 runs, Darren Sammy ripping out the crucial wickets from the Pakistan middle order and bringing home the bacon.

ICC committee should be forced to watch the whole game imo, just to be reminded that you can have an entire match with just a shade over 700 runs, and it'll still make compelling viewing.

Lol lets not get carried away here. Those two teams couldve played at the Premdasa in Colombo and produced a result in 4 days .

TeamTrousers, are you seriously suggesting that a downside of d/n test cricket is that more people will watch (as they don't need to take a day off work, or at least not a full day) and some of these people may be a bit rowdy? With all due respect, that is the sort of thinking that will marginalise test cricket more and more over the years. People who are starting watching cricket now need to be encouraged to follow test matches as well as one day stuff, and d/n may make more sense for them. The “old school” cricket fans will diminish and you sometimes have to accept a compromise if the alternative is worse. You don’t want test cricket to be like country cricket in the UK do you where it’s watched by one man and his dog in the member’s area?

I agree with the other stuff about over rates being too slow (which is easy to sort out) and drinks breaks no matter what the weather is etc. But whatever the ICC do or don’t do about these points d/n cricket may make sense in some cases. Not every test, maybe even just one per series, and maybe only in certain countries but it’s worth trying IMO. (You also mention dew, many places don’t have that problem but it’s a factor to consider – nobody is saying that all test matches should be d/n games.)