Former Australia captain Ian Chappell reckons that the unorthodox hitting in cricket such as switch-hits needs to stop or banned in cricket as it gives a clear disadvantage to the fielding team and bowler. Ian Chappell says ICC needs to ban these switch hits.
In the first two ODI games Australia vs India ODI series, Glenn Maxwell has been into the highlight with the kind of switch hits he has hit around the park. The former batsman Australian legend Ian Chappell believes that it’s quite unfair to the bowler and fielding team to bowl a batsman who switches his batting stance at the last moment of delivery to completely change the mindset of a bowler. He said,
“How can one side of the game, (ie. the bowlers), they have to tell the umpire how they’re going to bowl. And yet the batsman, he lines up as a right-hander – I’m the fielding captain, I place the field for the right-hander – and before the ball’s been delivered, the batsman becomes a left-hander,” Ian Chappell said
“If he’s good enough to do it by excellent footwork or whatever other means he can devise, I don’t have a problem with it. But when it’s blatantly unfair, it annoys the hell out of me,” he added
In the first two ODIs, Glenn Maxwell outplayed the opposition with his switch-hitting abilities to help Australia post the massive score on the board. In reply, the Indian team was totally unable to get over the line in any of the games.
Ian Chappell feels that in the current era of cricket, especially white-ball cricket the grounds and pitches are flatter from our times where pitches were more bowling-friendly. In modern-day cricket, pitches are batsman-friendly with hardly having any advantages to the bowlers to make the battle dominated by the batsman.
If a team scores up massive runs on the board while batt ing first, it seems to be the obvious result with a team batting second puts up the fight to make the contest even. Ian Chappell on this says,
“I’ve always thought that the pitches have been a little bit that way in one-day cricket, for a long time. The essence of the game, a good game of cricket is where there’s a contest. When it becomes just purely and exercise in [batting] statistics, I don’t enjoy it too much. If you want to make the pitches pretty flat, OK, T20, I’d maybe accept that. But outside of that, the best games of cricket are when the bowler’s got a chance,” Chappell said
In the first two games, Australia has racked up massive runs on the board with 350 plus in two matches while batting first. In response, the opposition was unable to chase the target on both occasions where the Australian team has also batted on.
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