This is very welcoming news indeed- Sachin Tendulkar has proposed ODI cricket to have 2 innings of 25 overs each, so that the toss would not be a very big factor, especially in day-night games. He got this idea during a Sri Lanka match few years back, which was washed out due to rain, but Sri Lanka had already batted (and on the spare day as well). But India could not complete a minimum of 20 overs for a result...
This is what Tendulkar has proposed out of experience.
I have said the same thing in Dot Chess (2007 April), using a system of formal and abstract terminlogy (Cricket is an unsymmetric playing format as one team bats (scores runs) and the other team bowls (scores wickets); unlike say soccer, basketball, racing, chess etc, where the objectives (and skills) at a given phase are usually similar for both teams- score goals, be faster, capture pieces etc.
This unsymmetric nature therefore makes the toss important and also makes issues like declaration tricky. By pausing at the 25 over mark we just make the impact of the unsymmetric nature more evenly distributed (I assume that we continue the second innings at the point we left off in the first). More interesting would be to be able to decide at which over between 20-30th (by batting team?) to flip the symmetry and let the other side in.
saumilzx
Mumbai, India
18 Sept 2009
Question: This does not affect T20s much, since the total 40 overs fits evenly into a session which can be deemed equal all through. But there are some historic possibilities here as well - and logically sound :)
Posts
