The gentleman’s game cricket always brings changes and invents some new way to surprise and entertain its fans. Recently, after an Independent report tabled by Channel 10’s CEO David Barham, the discussion started about splitting a T20 game into four innings to make the game more thrilling and exciting.
Many cricketers are skeptical about the idea; some of them have even rejected this in the very first instance. Former Indian opener Gautam Gambhir and former Kangaroo pace battery Brett Lee are two cricketers who are against to poke the traditional T20 format of the game.
Certain things should be traditional
I’m not a big believer that we should split T20 cricket into two innings. I think, Sachin Tendulkar somewhere gave a suggestion that we could try doing it with 50 overs which makes a lot of sense, because you’ve got 25 overs (each),” Gambhir said on Star Sports show Cricket Connected.
On the same show, Brett Lee, the former Australian cricketer, said that he believes in keeping certain things traditional.
“I am all for T20 cricket whether it’s the Indian Premier League or the Big Bash to have some flair about it, some excitement to bring people to the game,” Lee said.
“But there are some things you want to keep traditional when it comes to cricket and I think having four innings is a bit too much. I still think it’s always nice to see a target, and try and chase that target down or defend it,” he added.
What about Splitting innings in ODIs?
Speaking further on the show, Gautam Gambhir suggested that the idea should be implemented in ODI format of the game as it could reduce the toss affect.
The toss sometimes plays a huge role to decide the result of the game. He believes that not all the times but in some cases it plays a major role in deciding the winner of the game.
“It also probably takes the toss away as well because in some conditions the toss plays a huge role and I was absolutely in favour of that as well.
However, he maintained his disagreement to the idea that the suggested changes should be implemented in shorter format of the game.
“But not in T20 cricket, it’s too short a format and there’s hardly any time. Splitting that into 10 overs each will be too short an inning,” the World Cup-winning opener said.
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