Sport Today

   Please let me know your thoughts.
Glenn Russell
Cumberland College of Health Sciences
The University of Sydney
N.S.W.
Australia

Hmm.  I'm not sure if I like this.  It seems to go against the grain of
cricket, by arbitrarily preventing batsmen from batting.  To me it seems
much fairer to increase the run target rather than reduce the wickets
available to score a average run-rate target.

As you say, who decides which batsmen don't get to face?  What if a team
has already lost the new number of wickets?  They automatically lose without
any chance of going out and having a go!

I still like the "N best *consecutive* overs" target idea.  Simple to
calculate and administer, and I think pretty fair, taking into account the
high scoring overs of Team A and any good bowling by team B that restricts
teams A's scoring over a number of overs.

This rule would give a target higher than that given by the "average run rate"
rule and lower than the "N best overs" rule.  I think that is what is needed
and what makes this rule attractive.

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   I still like the "N best *consecutive* overs" target idea.  Simple to
   calculate and administer, and I think pretty fair, taking into account the
   high scoring overs of Team A and any good bowling by team B that restricts
   teams A's scoring over a number of overs.

   This rule would give a target higher than that given by the "average run rate"
   rule and lower than the "N best overs" rule.  I think that is what is needed
   and what makes this rule attractive.

As the original proponent of this scheme (I think, or flatter myself
it is true :-)), I think it has some weaknesses, already pointed out
by some of the other netters.

The first, and most obvious modification in it (and, for that matter,
to the current rule), is that if rain begins in the middle of the
second innings, say, 50 overs of the 1st were bowled, and it began
raining after 20 overs of the second - the 1st 20 overs of both teams
*must* stand, and the modifications of best N overs, or best
consecutive N overs must be applied to the balance.

This is very easy to administer, and consistent. If it rains several
times, each time the overs lost are decided, the rule can be reapplied
on what remains.

However, I cannot think of any rule that is fair to the team batting
first, in case it rains in the middle of the first innings. Any
suggestions for this case?

Atri

If the rain didn't come, they'd just save Reid till later when his big
hitting skills might be more required...

There have actually been two excellent examples of just how this rule
works fairly well (its not perfect by any means) in the recent past.

The first is (obviously) today's game between WI and India, that illustrates
that its not impossible (even with the max N overs rule) for the team batting
second to win in this kind of game.  I have very little info on the game,
but it seems as if the WI approached it in exactly the right way to play
second in a game that might be affected by rain, got off to a very good
start, and then continued after the rain iterruption, even though they seem
to have scores just a couple less than India in 10 less overs, a much harder
target than India against Aust, and almost as difficult as Pak against SA.
The Pakistan innings was almost a prime example of how not to play, the
2/70 odd at the interruption (which has been described as a good start)
was exactly the opposite, there looked to be no real attempt to score much
at all in the opening overs, meaning that when the rain came it was simply
too late.  There's no question but that if there's a possibility of rain,
you have to allow for it - and rain never "just happens", you're always
going to get 30 minutes of so of advance warning (or almost always, and
certainly in all of these games).

The second was the game between England and Australia - and yes, that was
a game where there was no rain at all - but the possibility of rain was
there, early at least.  There Border won the toss and had to decide whether
to bat first, or second - with the old "average run rate" rule (that some
people still seem to think is a better way) he would have had no choice but
to bat second, whatever happened, he'd have been in the better position.
With the new rule that's certainly not true, batting first can be an
advantage, in some cases, a big advantage, as has been seen.  It can also be
a liability - eg: if rain comes during the first innings, so the captain has
a choice to make, rather than just following te formula.  In this case
Border (as probably most captains would) decided to bat first, that's
probably where the bigger advantage was, and it backfired - as should be
possible in any of these cases where you gamble to try and achieve an
advantage.  It didn't rain, no overs were lost, but Australis did end up
having to bat in an overcast atmosphere, where the ball was swinging more
than it did in the second innings where England batted - just the reverse
of a normal day/nigt match.  By then the clouds had all blown away...
I'm not saying that Australia would have won had they batted second (England
are playing very well at the minute, and would have won anyway), just that
the run rate rule worked reasonably well in doing (partly) as it should,
that is, in removing the absolute effect of winning the toss on matches
where rain threatens.

kre

ps: I wouldn't criticise Imran for sending SA in the other day - then
there was no real hint of rain at all, what was forecast was a few showers
- which came during the SA innings - even if they had been enough to cause
play to halt, it would have been of benefit to the team batting second -
another example to illustrate that "bat first" on winning the toss is not
a natural outcome of the current rule, unlike the "bat second" which was
the only intelligent thing to do with the previous rule, making the toss
the game decider in many cases.   If you really feel the need to criticise
anything, criticise the slow batting rate in those first 20 overs, just
another 10 runs there could have made the result different.

   The first is (obviously) today's game between WI and India, that illustrates
   that its not impossible (even with the max N overs rule) for the team batting
   second to win in this kind of game.  I have very little info on the game,
   but it seems as if the WI approached it in exactly the right way to play
   second in a game that might be affected by rain, got off to a very good
   start, and then continued after the rain iterruption, even though they seem
   to have scores just a couple less than India in 10 less overs, a much harder
   target than India against Aust, and almost as difficult as Pak against SA.

Not quite. The totals are the same (190+) but WI got 46 overs to do it
and Pakistan got 33. The difference here was that whereas both WI and
Pak got similar totals to chase and the rain came at roughly at the
same time, the over reduction was more drastic in Pak's game.

   The Pakistan innings was almost a prime example of how not to play

Agreed.

   kre

   ps: I wouldn't criticise Imran for sending SA in the other day - then
   there was no real hint of rain at all, what was forecast was a few showers
   - which came during the SA innings - even if they had been enough to cause
   play to halt, it would have been of benefit to the team batting second -
   another example to illustrate that "bat first" on winning the toss is not
   a natural outcome of the current rule, unlike the "bat second" which was
   the only intelligent thing to do with the previous rule, making the toss
   the game decider in many cases.   If you really feel the need to criticise
   anything, criticise the slow batting rate in those first 20 overs, just
   another 10 runs there could have made the result different.

Good points, kre. I came to essentially the same conclusion after my
initial disappointment had vanished.
--
        --SAN

This means that side batting 2 will have to target the "n" best of side 1's
batting overs as their first "n" over's goal.

Makes for an interesting game. What one day cricket is all about??

I don't have the numbers with me, but if I recall correctly, India
were behind the SA rate up to approx over 19~21. Compare that with the
WI approach of knocking off the runs in the beginning.

Well done WI.
--

eg. the Aus/India match, 3 overs taken from india near the start
of the indian innings, either rule seems ok, but the "best overs"
rule seems to penalise the second innings a little (but 3 overs
is not much).
The England/Pakistan match highlights the problem with the "best overs"
rule.

Why not a hybrid of both rules? I.e. if the team batting second
starts an innings with the expectation of completing less than
50 overs, then the target is the best n overs.
If however they start batting and then rain strikes and wipes out
part of their innings (having batted x overs), they should need
to get x*average runrate + the expected remaining number of overs
worth of best overs.

I believe this would have given England the match over Pakistan,
the match against India would have been won by India, but since
it seemed to involve some nervousness by the Indian batsmen, it
still could have gone either way.

The problem with the above rule occurs with multiple interruptions.
I guess you could require the batting side to score the average run rate
of the target overs for each set of interrupted mini-innings.