As scoring rates in ODIs continue to soar, specialist bowlers are becoming a rarity

India defeated England in two out of three high-scoring games in their final build up to the Champions Trophy in England in June. The decision by the Indian selectors to field a middle-order around the experience of Yuvraj Singh and MS Dhoni, and the power hitting of Hardik Pandya and Kedar Jadhav, has been largely vindicated. Rohit Sharma and Shikhar Dhawan will probably return as the regular first-choice opening pair for the tournament.

Flawless teams are rare. But in this current era, the problem is amplified by the disarray caused the International Cricket Council’s constant tinkering with the fielding restrictions rules since 2008. There aren’t any bowlers left in today’s cricket with experience of bowling with five fielders on the boundary after the 15th over of the innings. Nobody seems quite sure what a good ball is anymore. Consider the following problems.

‘Good length’

There are three common ways in which a batsman is dismissed by a bowler – caught, bowled and LBW. Two of these require that the ball be delivered such that, absent any intervention from the batsman, it will go on to hit the stumps. A “good length” emerges from this basic fact. “Back of a good length” is the defensive version of this. It’s not short enough to square cut or pull easily (though class batsmen can), but it is not threatening the stumps. Two standard strategies in ODI cricket these days – bowling close to the wide line, and bowling short – eliminate the bowled and LBW dismissals altogether.

At Eden Gardens, England steadfastly refused to challenge the Indian batsmen’s stumps even though there was some assistance for the fast bowlers under lights. As a result, India got far closer to England’s total than they should have. England’s defence of their total was not a case of bad bowling, because the tactic of using the short ball was deliberate as the field settings showed. Yet, there was movement available off the pitch and even in the air with the new ball. With the asking rate requiring batsmen to attack the bowling, there were bound to be opportunities for taking wickets. Ajinkya Rahane, Virat Kohli, MS Dhoni and Hardik Pandya were all dismissed off good-length deliveries, which invited them to play off the front foot.

Getting the ball to move

There are usually three ways in which a fast bowler can get a ball to move off the straight on its way to the batsman. First, the bowler can strive for conventional swing. Second, the bowler can strive for movement off the pitch by landing the ball on the seam. Third, the bowler can strive for reverse swing with the older ball. Reverse swing is an exceedingly rare possibility given that two new balls are used. Conventional swing and seam come into play if the bowler bowls a good length and attacks the stumps.

The great value of these types of movement is that they challenge the width of the vertical bat. If the length is too full, it doesn’t matter as much what the ball does after pitching since it is too close to the bat. If it is too short, then the ball doesn’t have time to swing, and has far enough to travel after pitching to allow the batsman to adjust to any seam movement.

The typical argument against bowling “length” is that it allows batsmen to line the ball up. When the ball is moving even just a little bit, the chances of the batsman not middling the hit increase. When this happens, if the ball is on the stump, dismissals become more likely. But worries about getting hit prompt bowlers to try and bowl yorkers or bouncers. Yorkers are extremely difficult to bowl. Further, missing a yorker by a small margin can produce either a full toss or a half volley – two deliveries that are among the easiest to score from.

Bowling short brings similar problems. Unless the short ball is high enough, it becomes a long-hop. And unless there is sufficient pace in the pitch, the ball has to be pitched very short to get it high enough to trouble the batsman. Given the limit of two fielders behind square on the leg side, the odds of a batsman hitting a catch to one of them off the middle of the bat are low. The effect of using bouncers and yorkers, given the merciless margin for error for both those options, is probably no worse than the good length on the stumps.

Fielding restrictions

Fielding restrictions have had a structural effect on the status of bowling in 50-over cricket. As a result, teams are picking fewer outright specialist bowlers and deeper batting line ups. In today’s game, a team picking a batsman of Malcolm Marshall’s quality at No. 8 is out of the question. Having fewer specialist bowlers has the effect of reducing the overall quality of bowling. This in turn makes it more difficult for fielding teams to exert any control over proceedings.

It is hard enough for specialist bowlers who possess the control to implement a team’s bowling plans. It is basically impossible for lesser bowlers who do not possess comparable control to do this. If Stuart Broad finds it difficult to control the scoring in ODI cricket, then Liam Plunkett is going to find it even more difficult to do so.

It is not surprising that despite all the talk of these new bowling “plans”, scoring rates continue to soar. The table below shows the number of totals of 300 or more scored by the top-nine Test-playing nations (the traditional eight and Bangladesh) in each World Cup cycle (excluding the World Cup tournaments themselves). Since the 2015 World Cup, this share has nearly doubled.

It would be interesting if an international team came along and decided, as a matter of policy, that it would pick the four best available specialist bowlers, who would attack the stumps as a rule, and use the short ball only as a variation. That if they were going to get hit anyway, they might as well maximise their chances of getting batsmen out. We are unlikely to see this in the upcoming Champions Trophy. The question then becomes: Which of the more or less equally potent hitting line-ups will win the tournament?