Now, Mukul had written:

From how long you keep a bowler on, to when to take the new ball, or how far ahead you should be to declare, or whether you should enforce the follow-on, or whether Ashley Giles should convert the paying public to rugby by bowling over the wicket forever, or how to deal with a threatening bowler who can bowl at your batsmen without an over-limit, these are decisions that captains and players make routinely in Test matches.

There are equally difficult decisions to be made in one-day cricket – (the new ball/follow-on/declarations obviously don't exist). ODIs demand far more flexible batting orders, they make sudden demands on both teams to switch from attack to defence with instant effect, they involve skippers juggling two half-decent bowlers to make up the "fifth" quota, they involve decisions to change reverse-swinging balls in the slog or not. In a run chase, careful planning is always required to anchor and target specific bowlers.

In addition, ODIs now involve sharp strategic thinking around the timing of powerplays, and supersubs – I don't have the space to expand on specifics. I disagree with Mukul's desire for a blanket ban of the supersub – I would much prefer a soccer-type team of 13, any 11 of whom could bowl, or bat, or be on the field at a given time. As it stands, the system of announcing the supersub before the toss leads to warped outcomes.

Certainly I would like an ODI scenario where two designated bowlers could bowl a maximum of 15 overs each. By the way, the prevalence of one-day cricket has led to a deterioration of close-in fielding standards – the only major drop in skill I can think of as a result of ODIs. Very few decent third slips and bat-pads are available nowadays.

I didn't mean to imply that Test cricket lacks strategic content but I suspect that ODIs force cricketers to be continually thinking on a ball-to-ball basis about overall pictures in a way that Tests don't. This is why most cricketers prefer playing Tests – it's easier to concentrate in a Test where there usually isn't an equation ticking away continuously.

Of course, Tests require a deeper knowledge of core skills – I've already said that – naturally it can test a batsman more when bowlers don't run out of quota and captains are not worried about a sudden 2-3 over blast of slogging.

About field restrictions (with regard to powerplays), West Indies at their peak, Australia in 1975 and other quick bowlers sometimes (in early stages of 1999 for example) have gone for the kill with 6 men inside the circle (3 slips, gully, bat-pad, etc). As did the Sri Lankans in that infamous 1996 semifinal when their spinners strangled the Indian middle order. I don't understand why a captain would necessarily be hobbled by the removal of fielding restrictions if he reckons he can get a few more wickets by keeping close-ins.

Anyway my point is that I think both forms of the game can survive and of course, I agree that cross fertilisation could improve both games.

The charm of cricket lies in the battle betwen the bat and the ball, and unfortunately the current trend is to break the balance to make it into a one sided affair for the bat. Fielding restrictions, limited number of overs available for a bowler (actually the concept of limited overs makes the contest in favour of the batsmen, more so visible in the 20-20 phenomenon), and also sundry technical issues like material of the bat (many articles in cricinfo has raised the issue), have all had this effect reducing the game from bat-ball contest to a bat-bat contest, and this will kill the game in the long run, even if not kill it will change the game beyond recognition. Life and everything along with evolves, so if the direction of the civilasation is towards a less complicated, less charming sport with a "wham bham thank you ma'am" attitude, it can't be helped, one has to learn to adapt to the new situation and make the best out of it.

Given all the variety of one-day cricket tactics and strategies that Devangshu has pointed out, most limited over games follow a very similar pattern, the diverse psychological battles which characterise the test cricket is completely absent.

It will take me a book to bring out the analogies of cricket with life in general, but the shift in the focus of approach in cricket mirrors the shift in the philosophy of life that we follow. The trend is to generate artifical excitement in the short term basis in a contrived environment, but no matter how many contraptions one may use in the short term basis, these can never rival the infinite variaties of subtle nuances of the long term battle between the bat and the ball, where both are equal. And that was the charm of cricket.

Hi,

Great reading. Arguments and the counters.
Though quite irrelevant to the topics being discussed here, could not resist asking the following ( Where else could I find so many pundits?).

Have anyone seen Yashpal Singh play (Services) ? can you kindly let know, aside from ther robust average (62.0) how good he actually is ? and how come he has never been discussed before ?

Just curious, any answer will be deeply appreciated.

The piece above is rather hastily analyzed! One-day cricket involves as much strategy as Tests, simply because there is no time for the captain to be tactical with every delivery, and mostly captains have to be responsive rather than pre-emptive. Thats where the batsman scores in the shorter version.

But I think, and am sure most ardent fans will agree with me, that each version gains that much more popularity due to the fact that the other exists. If Tests were not there, one wouldn't be able to appreciate the un-ending excitement and furiously paced action of a One-dayer. On the other had, Tests give fans the unparalleled enjoyment of a chess game, and people like me appreciate the nous of Tests more due to the overdose of a packed One-day calendar.

Each makes the other. 20:20 will also thrive simply because it will provide a 3rd shade of contrast. Each of the 3 versions will feed of the others. And so will the players.

I cant believe Ganguly has been selected in the test squad to play SL...At present he is a liability to the team...He was ok in the past...but the past is the past...india have to look to the future. ganguly is a disrupting influence to the team and without him..they have played very well...By appointing the new coach, straight away one of his first decisions was to get rid of ganguly and appoint dravid. Greg Chappel is not a stupid man, and he knows the best players have to be picked at that time...and he can see ganguly is a fading force and there is a need to give the other young guys like yuvraj and kaif an extended run in the team. By appointing Dravid, gagnuly is not there for his captaincy, but he cant be there for his batting? whens the last time he made a significant innings against a bowling attack of note...u have to go way back to the series against Australia in the Brisbane test..but after that i cant think of anything signifcant? Whens the last time he scored significant total runs over the course of a series consistently...
His fielding? well he is regarded as one of the worst around and can be seen as a liablilty in the field..
Bowling? well enough said about that..no way can he regarded as an allrounder..thats ridiculous...

Well if he isnt there for his captaincy or his batting or his fielding or his bowling.... What is he there for?????

It disappoints all indian fans when we see the squabbles within the BCCI. Everyone cries out for better administration with a unity of purpose that goes beyond geographic borders. When it comes to selecting the team, though, all of us seem to muster passionate emotions for our own state or zone players - though we never go to watch them play during a first class game.

Yes, I realize the article by devangshu datta was about test cricket and one day cricket. I also understand that Mr. Arjuna has brought in the subject of Ganguly's selection at the wrong forum.

But has he really? Now, has ganguly's selection not made test cricket poorer, robbing it of talents in form like yuvraj singh, mohammad kaif and suresh raina, who are also excellent fielders? Also, have his statements made to the media been at all sensible? ("I have taken 14 to 15 wickets in duleep trophy????" NINE, MR. GANGULY. the difference is just in numbers, a subject you are least acquainted with in recent times excepting in the context of BOARD MEMBERS SUPPORTING YOU)

Lets look at hard facts. Everyone around India, excepting the passionate and unreasonable Bengali fans, would have supported the move to drop ganguly as player and captain in Tests for a start if it had been taken right after the zimbabwe trip. The logic is simple - he has scored more runs in one dayers and so dropping him in one dayers at the outset might be difficult; and so, lets drop him first for the test matches and ease him out of the one dayers later.

The reality was so stark and different and....well, unreal. Ganguly was dropped for the One day matches since that version demands better physical fitness compared to tests - a notion i severely disagree with - and he has now been selected as an allrounder for the TESTS!!!!

His performance in the recent test matches are common knowledge. Add to that kiran more's Ranbir singh mahendra like stupid statement that Ganguly was chosen as an all rounder in place of ZAHEER KHAN???? please help me, cric info. I dont understand the reasoning in all this. for starters, zaheer khan has a poor test record in recent times, and a brilliant record ONLY in the domestic and unofficial matches. And zaheer khan cannot find a place in a team that has found R. P SINGH AND sreesanth, NOT UNLESS THE TWO ARE UNIMPRESSIVE. Add to this convoluted logic is the allrounder tag for ganguly! jesus christ! He cannot find a place in our ONE DAY squad as an all rounder - his bowling is that poor - and now, suddenly, because three board members like his sexy face or some organ that looks just as pretty to them, back he is where he so DOES NOT BELONG. Isnt test cricket all the poorer for having ganguly in its realm? and isnt one day cricket all the richer for the contrary?

I will go back to where i began. We all cry out for good administrators. But when it comes to selecting players, we want bengal or mumbai players selected, irrespective of relative merit. Where are the real hypocrites? within the board? or among us? or within both? Who were the bengali chauvinists that gave a call for a boycott of the ind - sa one dayer since ganguly was not picked? What next? Secession from India? Boycotting bangladeshis? (this is happening already) Driving away out station players? throw out rohan gavaskar for playing for Bengal without being a bengali? The line is drawn, cric info. The line is drawn - by the people. They tolerate and UNDERSTAND the bengali chauvinists, and so the chauvinistc proliferate and survive. They push and push for a player's selection on the basis of region and not on talent or merit, and so the politicians (also known as members of the BCCI) survive by fanning the fury and switching on their air conditioners - not to mention, backbiting, intriguing and down right cheating their way to success.

Sorry bengal. Introspect, for the sake of the soul of our cricket. Understand how far away india is from the top teams, especially when they select ganguly to play - be it in tests or one dayers. And as a parting note, i must compliment the well-behaved calcutta crowd during our loss to south africa today. Your warm applause of graeme smith rivals chennai's gesture when wasim akram's pakistan snatched victory from the jaws of defeat.

Sorry cric info, for diverging from the iscussion about the merits or otherwise of the two versions of the sport we all love. more on that, without any digressions, tomorrow. and yes, cric info, we all love you.

This discussion seems to be diverging from the original remit..

"I suspect that ODIs force cricketers to be continually thinking on a ball-to-ball basis.."
I think what you're focussing on here is neither strategy nor tactics, just the different psychological requirements of Tests and ODIs.

In any case, the question of which game (if any) has more strategic vs tactical content seems irrelevant. Sports are fundamentally about the tension between a meritocratic comparison of opponents and the patience of the audience. Let me advance a couple of arguments why I tend to weight the former more:

1. It is possible to over-strategize a game, to the point where all the strategic decisions made by the teams are in the noise. I think ODIs are close to this point - without access to specific stats, there seems to me to be a clear correlation between who wins the toss and who wins the match, at least for D/N ODIs. If this is true it makes any discussion of which version has more strategy irrelevant.

2. There's something dramatic about a close game, but engineering a sport to make close games more likely is corrupt. Close games were valued in the past precisely because they were so rare - when one occurred the audience realized they were in the presence of something special. To attempt to provide this magical moment on tap by changing rules around, increasing the randomness in the game, well, we might as well all watch .

Lest I be dismissed as a purist, let me make an example of a game that has made an admirable compromise between meritocracy and the audience's patience: Chess. Lately one notices that performance in rapid chess is correlated pretty strongly with ELO rating (which does not take rapid chess into account). In this case the breakthrough that made the compromise possible was the invention of the Fischer clock, which adds a few seconds to the player's clock for each move made. So it is possible to move rules around without losing the spirit of the game in the shuffle, but be careful.

I think a lot of people totally misunderstand the options that the supersub gives you. Dravid was quoted as saying that the "supersub is only useful if you win the toss". The real truth of the matter is that choosing how you want your supersub is a matter of how aggressive you want to be. It can let you get a great advantage if you win the toss and you choose to be aggressive, but it can also let you try and negate the advantage that the opposition got in winning the toss ... if you choose to less aggressive. In the latter case, the choice of the supersub is really a "hedge" that a side can make against winning a toss.

I cannot take credit for these ideas as they were brilliantly explained by dp (deep point) in the newsgroup rec.sport.cricket .. while dp has fairly radical ideas about whether or not cricket is a representative sport, I think he is on to something with this analysis.

-Slash

(Reposting from dp's r.s.c post)

--------------------------------------

> Agreed to a point, however I think the best supersub strategy is to
> select the player to mitigate against the worst possible toss situation
> (ie, losing the toss and doing what you wouldn't have done). So, if you
> would have batted, then select a batsman, if you would have fielded,
> then select a bowler. That way, if you are doing what you don't want to
> do last, then you have more options when doing it.

Depends on how much of risk-taker the captain is. If he is a gambler
and wants to go for broke, then he could choose the 12th man (I hate
that term supersub) assuming he is going to win the toss. Let's say he
has decided to bat first if he wins the toss. Then choose a bowler as
12th man. If you win the toss, you get the benefit of using the 12th
man, otherwise, the bowler replaces the extra batsman right at the
beginning of the match. So if you win the toss, you have the toss
advantage as well as substitute advantage, whereas if you lose, you
have neither. This strategy could be useful for weaker teams when they
are playing against far superior teams. If they know they need the
advantage of toss to have any chance of winning the match anyway, they
might as well pick the sub hoping to win the toss.

So, basically there are three ways to pick the 12th man:

1. Pick for TossWin scenario (Gamble on toss)
2. Pick for TossLost scenario (Mitigate the impact of losing the toss)
3. Pick a bits-n-pieces guy so that you can use him irrespective of
whether you bat first or bowl (Toss-Neutral)

If the advantage of winning the toss is 1 unit and advantage of having
an extra specialist batsman or bowler is also 1 unit and advantage of
having a bits-n-pieces guy is 0.5, then the pay-offs for each of these
strategies will be like this:

Toss
Won Lost
Gamble 2 0
Mitigate 1 1
Neutral 1.5 0.5

If both teams go for Mitigating strategy, then the impact of toss on
the result of the match will be minimal. The toss-winner will have the
advantage of toss whereas toss-loser will have the advantage of
substitute. If both teams on the other hand go for Gambling, then toss
become all-important.

So that way, this rule is an improvement over what existed earlier
where winning the toss conferred a distinct advantage to that team and
there was no way to mitigate it. This rule is also better than the
alternative being suggested - that is, let the teams choose the 12th
man after the toss - which is hardly any change from before, except
that teams will be playing with 12 players each, one of whom won't be
on the field at any given point in time. Whereas, with the rule as it
is now, there is some strategic element to it and there is some
thinking to be done by the teams.

I also agree that having Shane Bond as sub is not a bad idea at all. In
fact, if you have decided to go for Mitigate strategy and have decided
to bat first on winning the toss, then your sub should be your #11,
like McGrath, Murali or Bond.

-dp

One dayers are nowhere as complicated as a Test match.

The amount of tactical changes that are open to the captain in a test match are enormous.

One day cricket, is simply a microcosm of a given period in a test match.

Both have their merits and both can be very exciting to watch. I do fear that one day cricket is becoming far too formulaic and the changes that have been brought in are only serving to make it into a circus act more than a real test of cricketing skill of 11 v 11.

this analysis of the super sub by dp is excellent. I really agree with the point that selecting the super sub after the toss is a bad idea. Either we use the strategic elements to utilize a super sub, or we do away with the super sub altogether. No question of selecting a super sub after the toss. Nothing changes then from the scenario of 11 vs 11. it simply becomes 12 vs 12, but the element of strategizing is lost.

As for the power plays, i am waiting for the day an ULTRA AGGRESSIVE captain uses his two power plays between the 35th and the 45th overs, attacking from overs 1 to 35 with spinners and pacemen........

Also, it might make cricket a really brilliant game if the three power plays were all left to be decided by the bowling captain. That way, no batting side can open the innings with a pinch hitter or with the intention of coming out all guns blazing. The ten over power play could be taken at the end of the twenty fifth over or something. This makes the game tremendously nuanced and allows the bowlers the opportunity to neutralize the tremendous advantage that batting sides currently have against them in the first ten overs. AGREED, though, that the entertainment value might be diluted. But i dont know if watching batsmen pummel bowlers for the first ten overs is any more entertainment than watching them pummel bowlers between the 25th and the 35th or indeed, as it happens, right at the DEATH.

so......this way, the best batsmen may have to play a different game until the power plays are introduced and will have to change gears once the power plays are introduced, and then again, once the power plays get over. Also, a team that makes a low score batting first due to difficult conditions, can choose to come back into the game by stalling the introduction of the three power plays until the 30TH OVER. They can attack with people on the boundary as well as fielders close in and make a real fist of defending their smallish total, making for a good match even with average or below average totals.

I also AGREE that there should be atleast one power play to be decided by the BATTING CAPTAIN, WHICH ideally should not be the TEN OVER power plays, since that would mean that most teams would take it when batting in their first ten overs itself.

The advantage of giving the batting side one power play out of the two five over power plays is that the strategizing and the element of nuance becomes more pronounced. Also, a rule could be brought in prohibiting the batting captain from using his power play option beyond the 40 over mark - as in, the power plays should be completed by the 45th over AT THE LATEST.

I think these rules along with the current super sub rule, would revolutionize one day cricket and make the one day captains virtual strategizers for their respective teams and would also make the teams think twice when sending in a pinch hitter if ONE WICKET falls. The pinch hitters might have to be used after the fall of the third or fourth wicket, if the bowling captain chooses to delay the onset of the power plays.

I am not trying to confuse the players and the crowd, but only trying to work within an existing system of power plays to improve the quality and the dynamic nature of the flow of a one dayer, be it at the start, or during the middle stages.

I disagree with devangshu datta that the one dayers demand strategic planning and tactical nous, the way it currently stands. Yes, a certain level of planning for a bowler or batsman does happen in both tests and one dayers, and a certain THINKING ON THE FEET capacity is also important for one day captains more than for test captains, but until and unless the changes i have proferred above are brought in, One day matches are still a relatively simple game of batting and scoring well, and then defending it.

There might be something in the fact that, of late, a large proportion of test mathces have been immensely absorbing and that most of the posts I have seen seem to discuss how to make ODIs more interesting - rather than tests. As for me - I'd take a test match over an ODI every single time.

There are hardly any ODIS that stand out in my memory - a few where tendulkar took on the aussies, once when he bowled the last over against the 'choker' springboks, the Kaif led chase and maybe a few more - but tests are different. There are so many test matches that stand out in memory with great intensity.

Also - to me a very important distinction - I can hardly watch an ODI if India is not one of the playing teams, but I have watched with the greatest of interest test matches between Windies-Aus (not so these days, though), Eng-Aus, Nzl-Aus, SA-Aus (I can never forget the incident when Mark Waugh saved a test for Aus after surviving a controversial hit-wicket appeal). I think tests provide some of the greatest cricketing moments and contests between great players - ODIs barely manage to stick in memory.

Maybe its just me.