Harder, faster, longer – how game has changed

Fifty-over cricket has been transformed since England last hosted a World Cup 20 years ago. Tim Wigmore explains how

New rules favouring batsmen

No major sport has tinkered with its rules as ceaselessly as one-day international cricket. Consider what has been introduced since 1999 and subsequently been scrapped: batting and bowling power-plays, with teams given the option of when to implement fielding restrictions; changing the ball after 35 overs; and a supersub, a 12th player able to bat and bowl.

Yet the new rules that have endured have overwhelmingly favoured batsmen. From bowlers being permitted only two fielders outside the 30-yard circle in the first 15 overs, and then five thereafter, now bowlers are allowed two men out in the first 10 overs, four from the 11th to 40th and then five for the final 10. After bowlers bowl any no-ball – a high full toss as well as a front-foot no-ball – batsmen now get a free hit.

Perhaps the most significant change concerns the ball. From 2012, two new balls have been used in ODIS, so the ball stays hard for batsmen to hit, and bowlers can seldom generate reverse swing. Crucially, this ball is a Kookaburra, which seldom deviates much: the 1999 tournament, when the ball swung prodigiously, was the only one in which the Dukes ball was used.

More runs needed to win

Since 1999, the story of ODI cricket has been of norms recalibrated, with a cocktail of better batsmen, better pitches and rule changes combining to raise scores. What was once unobtainable has become almost mundane: England had chased down more than 300 twice in ODI history up until the end of the 2015 World Cup. They have done so nine times since.

In the first innings, international teams made a 300-plus score every 11.5 innings in 1999; since 2015, teams batting first have made 300-plus every 3.5 innings. Overall, the average first-innings total has increased from 219 to 247 in 2018. If this seems rather less of a rise than feels right, one explanation is that soaring scores compel teams to take more audacious risks earlier and keep attacking if they lose early wickets – occasionally, even England have imploded.

Twenty20, of course, has been central to this story. The format has induced batsmen to hit further and earlier. In lieu of sides having a couple of renowned six-hitters, almost an entire team’s worth is now standard.

The norm in sport is for one skill to rise and then another to rise in response to counter it. Something very different has happened in ODI cricket: batting has evolved at a faster rate than bowling. This is not all down to T20: after all, bowlers have played the format too, and have been able to import the same chicanery they use in T20 to stop ODI batsmen.

As well as the rules, at the root of totals shifting upwards is a physiological imbalance: batsmen can train more than bowlers, an advantage that has become more salient in cricket’s age of hyper-professionalism. So while reverse hits have become commonplace, ambidextrous bowlers are elusive.

For a sense of how much the game has changed, consider that Michael Bevan, a World Cup winner in 1999 and the best finisher of his age, hit only one six every 443 balls in his ODI career. Bevan’s mastery lay more in sharp singles and well-placed twos.

The pressure to score faster means that such players do not really exist today: even Joe Root, nominally the most sedate batsman in England’s top six, scores sixes three times as frequently as Bevan, and fours 1.5 times more regularly.

This points to a shift not just in the volume of runs, but in how they are scored. Sixes have become twice as common – from 118 balls per six in 1999, a six was scored every 59 balls last year. Twenty years ago, boundaries accounted for 41 per cent of all runs; now, they account for a shade under half. The world over, touch players are imperilled by power hitters.

Demise of dibbly-dobblers

This breed of bowler ambled in off a few paces and then delivered the ball at below 80mph – sometimes a lot less – moving it a little from a tight off-stump line, normally just short of a length.

The lack of pace was actually an advantage, because it meant it was hard for batsmen to hit behind the wicket. And so, once the first 15 overs were done, captains could place the five fielders they were permitted outside the 30-yard circle – typically at long off, deep extra cover, point, square leg and

long on – where the batsman was most likely to hit. This was the boring middle overs in excelsis.

The essence of the dibblydobbler was being undemonstrative, Kiwi and probably balding. In 1999, Chris Harris, the standard-bearer for this ilk of bowler, was all three. Together with his compatriots Gavin Larsen and Nathan Astle, Harris squeezed Australia in a victory in Cardiff, and helped New Zealand reach the semi-finals.

England had a phalanx of such bowlers of their own, including Mark Ealham, their most successful bowler in the World Cup; even Australia, with Tom Moody, channelled the spirit of the dibbly-dobbler.

Today, the dibbly-dobbler is virtually extinct, limited to a few batsmen who could bowl in an emergency, not any first-choice bowling options. A change in fielding restrictions has not helped: teams are now only allowed four fielders outside the circle during the middle overs, an impediment compounded by two new balls being used at the start of the innings, so the ball does not get stodgy and harder to hit in the middle overs.

Really, though, the dibblydobbler has been rendered extinct by Darwinian evolution. A generation ago international batsmen would greet them with a certain deference in the middle overs, reflecting their risk aversion and a relative paucity of shots behind the wicket. Now, they treat dibbly-dobblers with all the respect that cats afford mice – and other bowlers have to bowl in the middle overs instead.

The rise of spin

In the 1999 World Cup, England bowled just 15 overs of spin – 12 from Robert Croft and three from part-timer Graeme Hick – in five games. This time, England expect to bowl more in most matches, with Adil Rashid and Moeen Ali at the core of their attack.

It is a microcosm of the ascent of spinners in ODIS. From delivering 28 per cent of all overs in ODI cricket worldwide in 1999 and 2000, spinners delivered 43.1 per cent of overs last year.

Spinners have morphed into more adaptable bowlers. T20 showed how effective spin could be at the start of an innings, a lesson imported to ODIS. Twenty years ago, just two per cent of overs in the first 10 were bowled by spinners; by last year, that had risen to 16 per cent. The trend has been equally pronounced in England: in 2000, not a single over of spin was bowled in the first 10 overs, but 14 per cent of overs in the first 10 were spin last summer.

As scores have surged, so wicket-taking in the middle overs has become more important. For this, captains turn to wrist-spin. From just two wrist-spinners who were regulars in the last World Cup – Shahid Afridi and Imran Tahir – all squads bar Bangladesh and the West Indies now have a front-line leg-spinner in their squads.

They are bowling more because they are the most effective bowlers in modern ODI cricket. Five spinners are in the top 10 of the ODI rankings. Four – Rashid Khan, Imran Tahir, Kuldeep Yadav and Yuzvendra Chahal – are leggies. The fifth, Mujeeb Zadran, is nominally an off-spinner but bowls so many variations – including leg-breaks and googlies – that he is really a mystery bowler.

Revealingly, while all are sought-after T20 players, none have distinguished Test records; Imran Tahir’s 20 Tests, with a modest average, are the most of this bunch. This all suggests that, compared to both batting and pace bowling, the skills required for spinners in ODIS are more distinct from those needed in Test cricket.

Fielding gets serious

In 1999, no teams in the World Cup had specialist fielding coaches. Now, they all do. The single biggest distillation of the transformation in fielding over the past two decades is the boundary catch: a player catching the ball mid-air on or just over the boundary rope, flicking the ball back and then catching it on the rebound. This astonishing athleticism was unheard of 20 years ago; now, it is commonplace. Still, coaches believe there remains room for further uplift in fielding – 19 per cent of chances in ODIS last year were dropped.