Indian and Pakistani legends Sachin Tendulkar and Waqar Younis on Friday joined calls to scrap the practice of using two new balls in one-day international cricket following a string of mammoth scores.
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Tendulkar, the highest scoring batsman of all time, who retired in 2013, tweeted that having two balls in each innings “is a perfect recipe for disaster as each ball is not given the time to get old enough to reverse (swing)”.
He added: “We haven´t seen reverse swing, an integral part of the death overs, for a long time.”
Former Pakistan speedster Younis, a master of the reverse swing along with partner-in-crime Wasim Akram during their playing days, tweeted that he “totally agreed” with Tendulkar.
“Reason why we don´t produce many attacking fast bowlers..They all very defensive in their approach,” he said. “reverse swing is almost vanished..#SAD”.
The comments came after England´s batsmen set a new ODI record this week with a huge 481-6 against Australia at Nottingham.
Then on Thursday, England chased down the visitors´ 310 — a more-than-respectable total in former days — with 32 balls and six wickets to spare.
England´s total at Trent Bridge was the eighth score of 400 or more since the start of 2015. Before that there had been just 11.
The advent of the fast-scoring Twenty20 format has had an effect but one of the greatest changes has been using two white balls, one from each end, during an innings.
AFP
