One aspect of the “purity” of the game is maintaining abalance between bat and ball, and a competitive one at that. The one day gamewas on its knees because of the soporific mid-innings period that started becausethe bits and pieces bowlers were largely content to go for a run a ball and thebatsmen were generally happy to score at a run a ball – powerplays have helped,but are far too artificial for my liking, and it would work much better if youhad classier bowlers on and could watch the game being played properly – I thinkyou’d still have to have some fielding restrictions, to provide a way of makingthe bowlers attack the batsman and in turn freeing up some scoring areas forthe batsman, which surely should be the whole point of limited overs cricket.
I agree to an extent, but I think the stalemate in the middle overs is almost entirely to do with mindsets and hardly at all to do with the quality of bowlers. There have been countless rule changes in ODI's recently to try and reduce the length and extremeness of the middle overs; forcing both the bowling powerplays and batting powerplays to be taken from overs 16-40, instead of the regular 11-15 and 46-50 intervals that they were being used in before, making teams put an extra man inside the circle during non fielding restriction overs and introducing a new ball at both ends to stop the balls going soft too early in the innings. But none of these have really worked because the mindset of the players hasn't really changed. The powerplays are hardly powerplays at all anymore, sides just put three men out and bowl to that field, with the batsman happy to find the gaps in the ring. Even the men inside the circle are right back, so singles can regularly be taken. Only allowing four men outside the circle was definitely a ploy to stop part timers only going for 5-6 an over, but again, it didn't really change the mindset and bowlers just bowl one side of the wicket or one length and stack all their boundary riders in similar areas, with the batsman more than happy to oblige.
I think in order to change the process of how ODI innings work, rather than artificially bringing in new rules, it's going to take teams changing their attitude to it and doing something different. Keeping the field up in the middle overs and bowling a lot of overs of pace, or even just keeping the field up for spinners. Not many captains do that though, and it'll take quite a lot to buck the trend, in my eyes.
I've never seen a Ryobi Cup match, as they're not televised in the UK, and I've never got round to doing the stuff required to watch it using
different methods, so I don't know how much the 13 overs per bowler rule has changed things there. Would be great if an Australian could give more detail.
I don't actually hate the middle overs as much as a lot of others though. The fact that it's there shows that there is a place for batsman who can build an innings, and is one of the things that makes it a better test of skill than T20 IMO. I also think it's unrealistic to expect regular boundary hitting for 50 overs. Equally it's probably unrealistic to expect people to be hunting for wickets all the time in 50 over cricket; there's just nothing in the bowlers favour when he's running in to bowl the 30th over of an ODI.