Cricket subs
Time for one of my occasional cricketing posts, though this time not about my own playing (though I will mention the weekends games at the end ;)). In their infinite wisdom, the powers that be have decided to introduce football style subs into one day cricket.
The idea being, that you declare your starting XI, then toss up, find out what you’re doing, and then at any time during the match, can make one permenant substitution.
My main question is why?
Duncan Fletcher is apparently looking forward to it, but with England choosing a batsman/keeper it’s going to be pot luck if he gets any kind of game at all.
If England lose the toss and are put in to bat, they can’t afford to put the sub in, in place of a bowler, because they are going to need the bowlers for the 2nd part. There’s little point replacing antoher batsman, as he may as well have jsut been in the starting XI.
So if we bat first, he’s most probably not going to get a game, and his county are without a useful player.
Does that add excitement? I think it’s jsut going to add another random factor into it and mean that a game is based a little more on luck (more bias towards winning the toss) than before. Have a bowler as the sub and bat first, great, at the break, get rid of a batsman, stick your bowler in. Lose the toss and get put in the field, and again, unlikely to play. Wasted.
I really cannot see how this change is going to make one day cricket any better than it is already.
Anyway, end of that rant, maybe I’ll be proven wrong, just seems a daft idea to me, not making it more tactical, just more random.
And as for the weekends cricket I’ve just played? Well, played 3 won 3! Had a midweek friendly match on Friday that we won relatively easily. Managed to get the wicket of one of the openers, which was nice. Didn’t doa lot else, and the weather was terrible, so didn’t really enjoy it.
The Saturday it was the league match. I managed to bat at number 11, not be needed, and then not get a bowl either. So I went along, helped get laods of stuff ready, spent 45 overs fielding, taking one catch, and then got to put stuff away again AND pay £5 for the pleasure. Not great from a personal point of view, but one of thsoe things that happens from a team point of view.
Sunday however was pretty good. As Vice Captain, I made a request to havea good bowl, and to open up, which the captain agreed to considering I hadn’t had much chance recently. It turned out to be qutie a good spell, taking 5 wickets for 4 runs, from 8 overs! Had I jsut picked up one more wicket (and I was pretty close a few times) I would have easily beat my previous best bowling figures of 6 wickets for 18 runs last season.
We won that pretty easily in the end, and I enjoyed getting a good bowl and doing well, so the best game of the lot 