Infusing life to 50 overs cricket...

The last week was hectic, everyone spoke. There was no action but speech, excluding Harbajan.

Every cricketer you could imagine spoke about the state of 50 overs cricket, except of course the gentlemen from the Westindies. They were debating about the survival of cricket - the game. They would continue to, till Floyd Riefer leads his grandchildren against Afghanistan in a world cup that would be hosted by Vanuatu some 25 or so years from now.

Cutting the long prelude short. Let us firstly, thank Sachin for the proposal.

Thinking about it The Twelfth man got the sparkly idea of the century, something that would revive the great game of ODI cricket. Something that would extricate the game from the beaks of a vulture called T20.

Let’s jump straight to the brilliant idea.

Each team would play 2 innings. Each inning would be of 25 overs

The batting team, before commencing its first inning would declare their set of 6 players who would bat. The innings would come to close at the fall of 5 wickets or 25 overs whichever occurs first.

The notout batsman along with the remaining 5 would bat in the second innings.

So each team would have a total of 10 wickets to lose in the match and one player who would be the notout batsman in the first innings of each team gets to bat in the second innings too.

Each innings would have two powerplays, of 5 overs each. The first 5 overs and another 5 overs which the bowling captain could enforce anytime during the 25 overs.

Now for the bowling…

The team bowling would select its 4 bowlers who would bowl in the innings. 3 would bowl 7 overs and the other 4 . The bowlers who bowled in the first inning can’t bowl in the second. This means each team would have 8 bowlers.

To make things a level playing field and give some advantage to the bowlers, we would allow 25 bouncers an innings. The teams can decide to bowl all 25 in the trot or leave it to its bowlers to decide when to bowl them. So the game becomes much more competitive and balanced.

This version would be much more balanced than a blind 25 overs each innings cricket. There again inequality would creep in, it would become the game of your best batsmen and the bowlers. So ideally you can have 5 batsmen, 5 bowlers and a wicketkeeper who can bat. That would drive you home.

In the format we are proposing, we cut all these shortcuts off.

ICC… BCCI and the other powers to be… Are you guys listening ??

Don’t forget to pay The Twelfth man his due before you steal this idea !!

Thank you Thambi… I had to time you out !!

It is a warm-up they say...

Is it ??

Can you call an India - Pakistan encounter a warm-up game ??

Would you ??

This debate of "Is it ? Is it not ?" would go on for hours.

For this and more on the match, as it progresses Bored Cricket Crazy Indians have a fantastic plan or should I say platform ?

Yes, it is bigger and better than that mundane score card you see online.

Why only Online ? It's even bigger than watching the match on TV.

Imagine a comment you made about that stupid shot Sehwag or Afridi played being heard by a huge bunch of cricket lovers from all around the world ?

Imagine your small comment triggering a cracker of a discussion ?

Now tell me... Do you want this match to be just another warm-up ?

Or, would you want to join us in our virtual stadia and play along live ??

Do join the Twelfth man and the other "able" men from BCC! this evening !!

Re-integration

Thanks to "The Twelfth man" cricinfo have decided to return Nainital back to its original state of Uttarakhand.

I hope Karnataka doesn't object !!

That was when Nainital was part of Karnataka**

** As per cricinfo

And this post the reintegration

It's okay even if you decide to call the state by its old name, Uttaranchal. At least you got the geography right this time, leave alone the history !!

We have changed...

RajaB's have given way for "The twelfth man"

For he has been a non player for a while. So he has decided that he would take centerstage and start driving a couple straight down.

There also has been some small changes in terms of the design. As usual we have decided to borrow a preset template from the good guys at www.blogger.com.

Let's hope "The twelfth man" talks more frequently than RajaB used to those days.

Okay it's time, let me pad-up...