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Eden Park run-fest did cricket no favours

16th February, 2018
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D'Arcy Short of Australia walks onto the field to bat. (Photo by Scott Barbour/Getty Images)
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16th February, 2018
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The avalanche of statistics that no doubt poured forth during Australia’s rather comfortable (!) overhauling of New Zealand’s massive score at Eden Park in the T20 tri-series included one to please brand managers the world over.

Ultimately, it’s fairly irrelevant, as are most of the numbers which are given more importance than they really merit, but a glance up and down the various columns on the scorecard revealed that a record-equaling number of sixes were hit in the 38-and-a-bit overs.

The Kiwis cleared the ropes – or should it be touchline on a rugby pitch? – 18 times and the Aussies 14 to equal the 32 struck when India faced West Indies in Lauderhill 18 months ago.

Now, the latest instance was on an Eden Park field on par size-wise with where under-11 cricket is played and it barely takes a flick of the wrists to send the ball high into the stands, but nevertheless, what took place in Auckland was a glimpse into what’s to come if current trends continue.

This may well have been an extreme case of Twenty20 – ludicrously short boundaries, a flat surface, batsmen swinging at everything and impotent bowling attacks – but the car has been accelerating in this direction for a while and it doesn’t appear as though anybody has a foot near the brake.

Seeing the carnage unfold reminded me of a game I covered a few years ago. I doubt whether the 2013 edition of Northamptonshire Steelbacks against Warwickshire Bears from the County Ground in Northampton found its way onto the Australian networks and the contest itself was nothing to write home about.

But it was the first instance I’d seen of the boundaries being deliberately shortened in the name of so-called entertainment.

The chief executive of the time fed me the line of ‘it’s for health and safety reasons’ – the rope had to be a few yards in from the advertising boards apparently even though it had never previously been an issue – and then admitted off the record it was done in the search for higher-scoring and more boundaries.

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The decision turned a decent sized playing area into one almost not big enough for purpose but that didn’t prove to be a one off at Northampton and it’s now pretty much the default setting there and around the country (see if you can find any footage from and T20 at Trent Bridge in 2017 and you probably won’t believe your eyes).

This isn’t to condemn the 20-over game as a format. It’s now fully ingrained as part of the cricketing landscape, it has added new strands to methodology more than century in the making, it has breathed life into domestic structures around the world and it can be highly entertaining to watch.

Yet to see an international reduced to nothing more than exhibition baseball in drag – with far fewer nuances before any baseball fans jump down my throat – where indiscriminate swinging sees mishits fly into the crowd and bowlers reduced to nothing was unedifying.

D'Arcy Short

(Photo by Scott Barbour/Getty Images)

The players on show are fine cricketers who have more to offer than seeing their abilities reduced down to the lowest common denominator of who can hit the furthest the most often.

No tact, no diplomacy, just bludgeon then bludgeon some more. If that is what cricket wants then this is what it gets.

It appears to be the trendy line of thought that people won’t go to watch, that a new generation of fans can’t be attracted, unless a run-fest is guaranteed, that appreciation of the game itself is beyond those whose purpose is to put meat on the marketing target bone.

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Strip away the variety, the multitude of facets that make the whole, the foundations of a sport that aren’t in need of restoration and you’re left with a one-dimensional product as much unforgettable as it’s supposed to be ground-breaking.

If that is how it is going to be this one dissenting voice won’t fight the tide, but rather than selling the game, the gluttony on show at Eden Park sells it short.

Cricket is better than that.

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