The art of batsmanship as we have to come to know it over the last two decades and more, is slowly but surely undergoing a drastic transformation, age old strokes like the leg glance, off and on drive, square cut and so and so forth are all but extinct and their place in the cricketing lexicon has been taken by strokes such as the Dil Scoop, Upar Cut, Helicopter shot and so forth.....
Innovation and improvisation have become the hallmarks of most successful modern day batsmen and the classic manner of grinding out the bowlers and then accumulating runs through deft touches and placements through the gaps in the field primarily exist in chronicles of test matches in a bygone era or then tomes written during the halycon days of test match cricket......
Twenty 20 cricket (the latest form of the game to have taken the cricketing world by storm) and it's much older cousin, the fifty over version of the game reinvented the art of batting and soon sent connoiseurs or then ardent disciples of the classical form of batting packing for good......
Present day test match batsmen look to score at the rate of at least three to three and a half runs per over and therefore ensure that many more results in the most traditional and staid form of the glorious game of cricket, in fact cricket statisticians have reached the conclusion that almost seventy percent of all test matches played over the last decade or more ended up in either team participating in the match winning it one way or the other.....
Test cricket has become that much more exciting and spectator friendly thanks to the modern day innovations and improvisations adopted by the flamboyant batsmen of this era and the very fact that twenty thousand spectators and more thronged Bengaluru's Karnataka State Cricket Association Stadium on all four days of the recently concluded test match between India and New Zealand only serves to reinforce the above point....
Constant improvements or then newer and better ways of playing this traditional game are the only ways froward and yours truly is a great advocate of day and night test cricket and restricting test matches to a four day time frame as the International Cricket Council has to give the paying spectator whatever he or she wants and demands rather than expecting the paying spectator to watch the game doled out by the powers that govern the game in their seemingly infinite wisdom....
As for the age old argument about twenty 20 cricket slowly but surely sounding the death knell of the classical form of batting, well the jury is still out on that one.
Innovation and improvisation have become the hallmarks of most successful modern day batsmen and the classic manner of grinding out the bowlers and then accumulating runs through deft touches and placements through the gaps in the field primarily exist in chronicles of test matches in a bygone era or then tomes written during the halycon days of test match cricket......
Twenty 20 cricket (the latest form of the game to have taken the cricketing world by storm) and it's much older cousin, the fifty over version of the game reinvented the art of batting and soon sent connoiseurs or then ardent disciples of the classical form of batting packing for good......
Present day test match batsmen look to score at the rate of at least three to three and a half runs per over and therefore ensure that many more results in the most traditional and staid form of the glorious game of cricket, in fact cricket statisticians have reached the conclusion that almost seventy percent of all test matches played over the last decade or more ended up in either team participating in the match winning it one way or the other.....
Test cricket has become that much more exciting and spectator friendly thanks to the modern day innovations and improvisations adopted by the flamboyant batsmen of this era and the very fact that twenty thousand spectators and more thronged Bengaluru's Karnataka State Cricket Association Stadium on all four days of the recently concluded test match between India and New Zealand only serves to reinforce the above point....
Constant improvements or then newer and better ways of playing this traditional game are the only ways froward and yours truly is a great advocate of day and night test cricket and restricting test matches to a four day time frame as the International Cricket Council has to give the paying spectator whatever he or she wants and demands rather than expecting the paying spectator to watch the game doled out by the powers that govern the game in their seemingly infinite wisdom....
As for the age old argument about twenty 20 cricket slowly but surely sounding the death knell of the classical form of batting, well the jury is still out on that one.
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