Exhibit A in what’s wrong with cricket: Chris Gayle
● You could blame Chris Gayle for a lot, but the likelihood that the 2019 World Cup will be the first edition of the tournament in which runs flow faster than a run-a-ball isn’t his doing. Not entirely, anyway.
Runs were scored at 3.91 an over in the first World Cup, in England in 1975, and nudged above five for the first time in India, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh in 2011.
That might have been ascribed to the conditions, but the trend was maintained in Australia and New Zealand four years ago, where the figure reached 5.65.
Does that say batters are better, that bowlers — ever the overworked engines — are playing too much, that the balance of the one-day game has been tipped too far in the favour of batters, that T20 cricket is influencing the one-day version, or all of the above? And what might ODIs look like 40 years from now, if they even exist?
Bowlers have been neutered
Many factors have influenced the steady rise in the ODI run rate. For one thing, in 1975 — 43 years ago — one-day cricket was played in whites, using a red ball, and not entirely seriously. For another, only 19 ODIs were staged that whole year. In 2015? All of 146, or more than seven times as many as were played in the year of the first World Cup.
Gayle wasn’t born until four years after West Indies triumphed in the inaugural tournament, and what has defined him as a cricketer — the travelling T20 circus — didn’t scream into our consciousness, in the shape of the 2008 Indian Premier League, until he was months away from turning 29.
To argue that something as trivial, in pure cricket terms, as T20 hasn’t had a radical impact on every aspect of the rest of the game, regardless of level or format, is akin to questioning whether South Africans are upset about load shedding.
Bowlers have been neutered by whiteball cricket’s ever more batter-friendly regulations, and they play too much and are therefore worn out and injured more often than other players.
Put a monstrous hitter like Gayle into that equation and watch the runs go through the
Put a monstrous hitter like Gayle into that equation and watch the runs go through the roof, or over it
roof, or over it. And they will for the foreseeable future.
As we speak, Gayle is playing in the T10 League in Sharjah. Yes, T10. He jetted off to the Emirates after popping into Joburg to play a game in the Mzansi Super League — the latest reinvention of the T20 wheel — and with that became the first man to be part of 10 such ventures. Don’t fear, South Africans: he’ll soon be back.
In 2020, innings in a competition in England will consist of 100 balls and bowlers will send down five or 10 deliveries — but not more than 20 — consecutively. It’s over for overs, but not for Gayle, who will no doubt feature.
Perish that thought
“The strategy we have created will give the whole game clear priorities,” Tom Harrison, the England Cricket Board’s suit-in-chief, said this week. “The game has made huge progress this year, through collaboration, constructive debate and a volume of detailed discussion. The outcomes for all of this combined work are vital for the growth and sustainability of cricket, at all levels, in England and Wales.”
He couldn’t sound less like a cricket person if he tried. And what’s a mercenary like Gayle to do if the suits keep inventing more of the same ways for him to make money?
Play international cricket? Perish the thought. Gayle has made himself unavailable for all West Indies’ remaining ODIs before the World Cup. That takes him out of the selectorial mix, surely. Perish that thought, too.
“He [Gayle] is a stalwart not just for the people of the Caribbean, but around the world,” Windies selection boss Courtney Browne said this week. “Hopefully, everything being equal, he will be part of that team.”
Equal? As if. There goes the run rate.