The Australian govt and Cricket Australia must enter into a serious and dedicated joint campaign to bring El Warno back to Australia. Failure to do so would be a disgrace to our country’s heritage and would undermine all that we hold dear. El Warno occupies a special place in every Australian’s heart and it is only right & just that he should be here for us in a time of need.
The issue of the supersub has been solved. That leaves the ineffectual powerplays to sort out. The argument has largely been that the occurence of the powerplays should be up to the batting captain rather than the bowling. That’s just some lame reversal. Its so bleedingly clear that the powerplays should occur purely at random. A chance draw. Sometime between the 10th over and the 45th coldplay songs will blare out over the ground PA, sirens will wail, lights will flash. The powerplay is announced. Imagine the excitement for everybody just not knowing when they might occur, the flurry of activity when all of a sudden one comes about – just when the fielding side most needed it, or just when they were looking comfortable. Suddenly, by chance, everything is disrupted. And then another one.
Please petition the ICC – its such an obvious winner of an idea.
A few years ago, in the nineties, I have some recollection of an Australian tour of – was it Sri Lanka? As a team building exercise on this tour, the Australian cricketers all had to draw, from out of a hat, a particular facial hair style. The player was then required to grow & wear this style throughout the tour. It was a great idea but from memory they all just ended up wearing slight variations on the goatee. The idea, still, has mileage.
International cricket is currently experiencing a golden age in hairstyles. This is a boon that cricket’s administrators should be capitalising on. The clear way ahead is to give the cricketing public the power to decide upon hairstyles for players, which the player would then be required to maintain for the duration of the tour, or until a new hairstyle is demanded. Point deductions and fines for players not making the appropriate efforts should be harshly applied. The International Hair Styling Authority has already submitted a body of styles to the ICC which I am calling for them to adopt as regulation cuts immediately. A two tiered voting system should be put in place whereby, at the conclusion of each match, the public selects one PowerHair player and then selects the PowerHairstyle which the player must have ready to be worn in time for the next match. Players should be tested for hairstyle performance advancing product – if the readings are too low the player should face bans.
Its time the ICC stop nibbling away at the edges of one-day cricket and get serious. If they really want to reinvigorate the game, make it once again interesting for the viewing public, they need to do more then just add 5 overs of fielding restriction and give it a dumb name like ‘powerplay’. They need to really get deep into the way the games played. Make some changes which will test the skills of the cricketers in new exciting and more acute ways. My idea is that they give every fielder a little bat (a brand new piece of equipment!) and change the rule on catching such that to be out the ball actually has to travel not only to one fielder but through two fielders before it can be caught and the batsman deemed out. A catch can only be made by a second fielder after the first fielder has hit the ball, with his little bat, off its trajectory, along new lines, into the hands of the 2nd man. They could perhaps even award some sort of points bonus which increases with the number of fielders the ball travels through. They could deduct 5 runs from the batsman’s score for each fielder after the 2nd that are involved in the elaborate catch – or something like that.
And they really need to bring audience voting into the game for the supersub. Evictions by sms poll. That’s what one day cricket needs.