Saturday, December 10, 2005

Super-Sub Rule Need To Be Amended

Many teams have been labelled either outstanding or useless simply due to their captain's ability to win the toss and the ill thought out super-sub rule has tipped the balance of One-Day Matches from skill towards luck.

England won the 1st One Day International against Pakistan by 42 runs (a coincidence? I don't think so! Douglas Adams lives!), but had secured a large advantage before a ball had been bowled. By winning the toss Trescothick chose to bat first allowing England to make full use of their substitute, Liam Plunkett, by selecting him at the halfway stage. Had England been made to field first Plunkett would have become as superfluous as Pakistan's Arshad Khan.

Since the introduction of substitutes, 70% of the games have been won by the side winning the toss (not including today's match). This is no coincidence. If the ICC had bothered to test the use of substitutes in non-first class games, before implementing them at international level, they could have avoided devaluing 35 One Day International matches.

The solution is simple: sides should name their substitutes after the toss.

2 Comments:

Blogger Reem said...

70% of matches won via the toss is a fact that ICC must not ignore..

add to the fact that many day/night matches on the subcontient are skewed towards the team winning the toss as well (thanx to the dew factor) and one day cricket has been reduced to a lottery.

Grame Smith (or Gary Kirsten...i can't quite recall) correctly said that each side should get 25 overs (in the first half)in a day night to reduce toss/due factor playing havoc. But Smith had no clue as to what to do about super sub rules.

I think ICC is trying to immitate Hockey and eventually, cricket teams will have unlimited substitutions... i.e a player can come in, bowl 5 overs and leave, or can bat during a crucial stage and the leave... which means 11 batsmen and 11 bowlers!!
Geez!
Cricket will go bonkers!

2:36 pm  
Blogger Unknown said...

My old Physics teacher used to tell me: "never change more than one variable in between experiments, otherwise you won't know what caused any change."

Unfortunately the ICC must have had a different teacher and are trying to change too much too quickly.

Not sure about the 25 overs each idea. Perhaps a country could introduce this idea into one of their domestic competitions. If it works then bring it up a level into One-Day Internationals.

9:04 pm  

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