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Old May 3, 2007, 12:45 PM
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RazabQ RazabQ is offline
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Join Date: February 25, 2004
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I've actually thought about this quite a bit - and yes this is a non-flippant answer to a flippant question.

West Indies in the 70s and 80s, you may recall was as dominant a team as these batch of Aussies (there were definitely more loved but that's not the issue here). Their success was hinged on a battery of 4 genuine express bowlers who'd intimidate the opposition into submission so that their batsmen could play without inhibition (knowing that any total would be good enough). To combat this, the Aussi-English axis invented the one bouncer per over rule and then started no-balling the bouncers. Those rule changes along with cyclical stuff (retirement, hubris) led to the demise of the West Indian empire.

Now the world is faced with a similar hegemony - only the intimidation this time around comes from the batsmen. Boasting players of incredible power, extreme fitness and equipped with bats with immese sweet spots (ball hits splice and goes for six), Australian success revolves around batting the opposition out of the game and then utilizing a phalanx of extremely accurate, high-bounce bowlers to force opposition to take risks and get out (even Warne was known as much for his containment as his big rippers).

What do we do to combat this?

First of all - make the boundaries bigger. While you can't breed power into desis, you can make them more athletic. Bigger boundaries will negate, to some extent the power factor and I'm confidant that the likes of Indians, Bangladeshis, Lankans can get to the level of fitness of the Aussies.

Second, raise the seam of the ball. The game is becoming to geared to the batting side anyway. Raising the seam will bring back swing bowling and enable seamers to gain exaggerated movement. This way batsmen will have to think twice about just blindly hitting through the line, confident that wherever in the bat the ball hits, it will get runs. With a prominent seam, even standing outside the crease or taking a huge stride like Haydos or Pietersen will give you any advantage on the moving ball.

3rd, make like baseball and put in some regulation on bats themselves. Perhaps limit the use of any artificial materials such as covering sheet or put down regulations on how they are prepared or what woods are used. Go back and watch tennis matches from the 80s - compare that to the carbon powered games now. So much subtlety has been lost from tennis - unless we limit the bat technology, the same will happen.

4th, expand the ICC pitch program so that every country has at least a few bouncy pitches. This way the built-in aussie advantage of knowing how to play bouncy stuff goes away.
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