Cricket in transition

Necessity is the mother not just of invention but also innovation. And so, with one-day cricket having become predictable in its tactics and therefore less interesting, this 35-year-old version of the game was badly in need of some subtle change.

The International Cricket Committee has come up with two that ought to make a significant difference to the way the game is played. One is the introduction of a flexible 12th man, while the other is the introduction of flexible fielding restrictions.

The first means that whereas earlier the 12th man served only as a fielding substitute in case of injury, now he will have a more active role to play. The team will have the option henceforth of substituting a player with the 12th man at any point during the game, and the new man in will be allowed to bowl or bat.

In other words, the team now has the option of playing an extra bowler or batsman while still being able to make changes if things go wrong mid-game.

The second innovation relates to fielding. The initial 15-over restriction has been reduced to 10, and another 10 overs of restrictions have been added in two sets of five each, to be applied at any time at the fielding captain's discretion.

If the fielding side were to take a few quick wickets around the 20th over, for example, the captain could decide to enforce one of the two five-over restrictions straightaway, thus increasing the pressure on the batting side.

By putting more options in the hands of the fielding captain, the dominance that batsmen have under the current rules will diminish. We can expect to see a change in the 15-25-10 over format of field restrictions, consolidation and acceleration, respectively.

What's more, it gives a team the option of changing the team composition, even mid-game. If a team were to score heavily in the first innings, for example, it can choose to replace a batsman (presumably the worst fielder) with a bowler, and correspondingly replace a bowler with a batsman in the middle of the innings if it is in danger of running out of batsmen.

These changes serve the important purpose of introducing more unpredictability into the game. It will boost waning spectator interest because there are now more options and many ways that a game can progress.

Any modification of the rules should ideally increase the strategic aspect of the game. The ICC, this time, has got it right. However, it would do well to build on these, perhaps by introducing a few more changes. After all, unlike say basketball, even the limited-overs variety of cricket is not a continuously action-packed game. For that we now have Twenty20.

Instead, cricket's attraction lies in the strategy behind what's happening on the field. Certainly, to the devout, watching a fielding side tighten the screws on a new pair of batsmen, or watching engaging tussles between bat and ball such as those between Tendulkar and Warne, is more gripping than mere big hitting or quick wickets.