Do you like the new style or old style cricket?

[Jumno]

What I'm referring to is odi's I would say from 2015 world cup have been very high scoring and teams even score 330 continuously and can chase them down.

Back in the 90s, even 230 was competitive and 275 would be a winning score in most odi's, even 260 was challenging to chase down. You got to look at the 2019 wc final for the excitement of these average score games which was frequent back in the 90s.

So do you like this high scoring new style cricket or prefer the old style cricket? The 80s, 90s, 00s when cricket was quite a even contest between bat and ball and you had a good game of cricket even with average scores.

 

[TheJediBrah]

Bit of both IMO

we still have some lower scoring games, just doesn't happen as often. Depends on conditions.

 

[Line and Length]

Modern bat technology and the tendency to have relatively short boundaries (remember when the boundary was the picket fence not a line 10 metres inside?). I realise bringing the boundaries in was a safety issue so fielders could slide in to save a four but it is just an aspect that swings the pendulum in favour of bat over ball.

 

[TheJediBrah]

Modern bat technology and the tendency to have relatively short boundaries (remember when the boundary was the picket fence not a line 10 metres inside?). I realise bringing the boundaries in was a safety issue so fielders could slide in to save a four but it is just an aspect that swings the pendulum in favour of bat over ball.

Initially it was, but when you see how far they bring the rope in at a lot of grounds it's clearly not purely the case anymore

 

[stephen]

The 90s were a golden age for ODIs honestly. There were so many competitive teams and South Africa was invited back into the fold. It was glorious. SA, Aus, India, Pak, WI and England were all competitive through the era, but even Zimbabwe were no minnow back then.

Having said that I think the best balance was when scores were averaging out at around 280-300 in the early 00s.

 

[TheJediBrah]

The 90s were a golden age for ODIs honestly. There were so many competitive teams and South Africa was invited back into the fold. It was glorious. SA, Aus, India, Pak, WI and England were all competitive through the era, but even Zimbabwe were no minnow back then.

Having said that I think the best balance was when scores were averaging out at around 280-300 in the early 00s.

How do you mention England as being competitive and not Sri Lanka haha

agree with you though. 90s and even very-early 00s were peak for ODI cricket

 

[stephen]

How do you mention England as being competitive and not Sri Lanka haha

agree with you though. 90s and even very-early 00s were peak for ODI cricket

Yeah I knew I'd casually forget someone important.

 

[trundler]

Up to the early 90s, teams were leaving runs on the board by putting too much of an emphasis on preserving wickets. Batsmen would be content with 70 (110) and never really kick-on.This is where Viv and Tendulkar set themselves apart. The problem with modern ODIs is that the margin for error bowlers have is considerably smaller than for batsmen. Sometimes you see a batsmen get totally beaten, have a wild swing at it and get a boundary anyway. I'm not just talking about edges, of course. Longer boundaries would help. The 2 new balls rule is **** too.

 

[stephen]

Up to the early 90s, teams were leaving runs on the board by putting too much of an emphasis on preserving wickets. Batsmen would be content with 70 (110) and never really kick-on.This is where Viv and Tendulkar set themselves apart. The problem with modern ODIs is that the margin for error bowlers have is considerably smaller than for batsmen. Sometimes you see a batsmen get totally beaten, have a wild swing at it and get a boundary anyway. I'm not just talking about edges, of course. Longer boundaries would help. The 2 new balls rule is **** too.

That was much more of a problem through the 80s than the 90s tbh. The 90s mostly saw low scores because the bowling was so good and the bat technology hadn't developed yet.

Oh and fences instead of ropes, the introduction of day/ night cricket where new batsmen could barely see the ball after the 30th over in the second innings, fielding restriction rules and the tendency of sides to play very similar teams in both tests and ODIs. And no rotation policy.

 

[Daemon]

Players probably weren’t training to bat very aggressively either. Nobody was doing range hitting etc in for practice. Different times.

 

[_00_deathscar]

Also, too many plodders even as late as the 90s/00s as well - there weren't 'specialists', most test players played ODIs too, badly (and played about 100-200 too many...if not more). I think more than anything, the T20 format pushed specialists which later filtered through to ODIs.

Kohli, Sachin etc obviously are/were capable of playing all formats, but Dravid played 344 (!) ODIs striking at 70 in the mid 90s to 2011.
Can you imagine Pujara playing even 50 ODIs today, striking at 70? (He has played a grand total of 5).

 

[_00_deathscar]

What I'm referring to is odi's I would say from 2015 world cup have been very high scoring and teams even score 330 continuously and can chase them down.

I think JAMODIs you definitely see ridiculous scores, and maybe it's cos it was England, but the 2019 World Cup didn't necessarily have such high scores (apart from the occassional one) despite fears that every game was going to go 300+.
There were lots of competitive 230s-270s.

 

[Arachnodouche]

If you were to compile a list of the ten greatest ODIs of all time, chances are that a majority would have had middling totals and helpful pitches for bowlers. I imagine that's what most prefer watching.

 

[Teja.]

I think 'naturally' middling totals with the batsmen trying to squeeze out runs form every ball and trying to accelerate at the end = good

Batsmen chilling along to 250/4 happy to take the NO without trying to optimize = bad.

 

[Teja.]

In the 2011 WC, not even a single KO match out of the 7 played had a 300+ score with plenty of low scoring thrillers as well as 250-par matches.

 

[honestbharani]

Yeah it was an awesome WC. Many of the KO games had both games in the hunt for very long periods of the game.

 

[TheJediBrah]

Also, too many plodders even as late as the 90s/00s as well - there weren't 'specialists', most test players played ODIs too, badly (and played about 100-200 too many...if not more). I think more than anything, the T20 format pushed specialists which later filtered through to ODIs.

Kohli, Sachin etc obviously are/were capable of playing all formats, but Dravid played 344 (!) ODIs striking at 70 in the mid 90s to 2011.
Can you imagine Pujara playing even 50 ODIs today, striking at 70? (He has played a grand total of 5).

As stephen says though, you needed the plodders in those years. Filling a side with dashers when the conditions were harder for batting, bowling was a lot better, smaller bats, bigger boundaries etc. would have been a recipe for disaster. For every time you hit your way to 320+ you'd have 3 or 4 games when you were bowled out for 150

It's very presumptuous to assume that the only reason ODIs in the 90s weren't full of big hitters striking at over 100 was that they didn't think of it, or hadn't bothered trying.

 

[Tom Flint]

That was much more of a problem through the 80s than the 90s tbh. The 90s mostly saw low scores because the bowling was so good and the bat technology hadn't developed yet.

Oh and fences instead of ropes, the introduction of day/ night cricket where new batsmen could barely see the ball after the 30th over in the second innings, fielding restriction rules and the tendency of sides to play very similar teams in both tests and ODIs. And no rotation policy.

England rotated regularly in the 90s, but that's just because everyone was useless

 

[stephen]

England rotated regularly in the 90s, but that's just because everyone was useless

They were a decent ODI side at the start of the 90s but were garbage by around midway through.

 

[honestbharani]

When they selecte a specialist ODI side they looked really good. Pity they never bought into their own discovery of that philosophy until Morgan came along as captain and Bayliss as coach.