From Paul Leary, United Kingdom

Jos Buttler's ODI debut may not be too far off given the way things are going for England © Getty Images

As the dust settles on England’s ill-fated venture to India, the post-mortem has already begun. The obvious question springing to mind is how England, a team so feted little more than a month ago for its all-round excellence in every facet of the game, could falter so drastically away from home. It’s important that India gain all the plaudits they deserve, for what is a startling turnaround in their team dynamics.

While the injection of youth in India’s one-day side has played a vital part, it must be remembered that these players were present in the previous one-day series, and the contrast has been stark. In particular, fielding standards have shot through the roof, perhaps fuelled by the more familiar environment and characteristically vibrant home crowd. India’s batsmen have also relished the freedom of playing without the moving ball, and players such as Suresh Raina have enjoyed a renaissance of fortunes, able to play without fear or restraint. And that has really been the difference between the two sides.

Whatever failings England have had in the field, and there have been numerous ones, this series has been lost on account of England’s failure to put sufficient runs on the board. There are several explanations for this. Those who have followed the series on Sky in recent weeks will have listened to commentators’ focus on singles, or lack of them, and how the two sides have differed hugely in their ability to maneuver the field and rotate the strike. Inevitably, this has led to criticism of the middle order, and in particular Jonathan Trott, that great divider of opinion. While India have guided and angled the ball to all parts of the field, through skilled exponents such as Gautam Gambhir, England have appeared ponderous and lacking pro-activeness, culminating in too many dot balls. This has been embarrassingly exposed when facing spin and you need look no further than England’s spectacular and choking collapse in the final ODI to witness these shortcomings.

However, of equal if not more importance, when playing away from the swinging and seaming pitches of Blighty, are the Powerplays, or more generally, power batting. One-day cricket is a batsman’s game, increasingly so on the flat tracks of the subcontinent, and even more increasingly so since the advent of Twenty20. Scores have never been higher, and 300 is no longer a safe total. India are the world champions in ODI cricket because they possess the best batsmen for the format, and they combine the aforementioned pro-active rotation with brutal hitting in the Powerplays and towards the end of the innings. Therefore the key to succeeding outside home territory, where England’s top-class swing bowlers are able to win them matches, is a change of approach and mindset to batting on one-day cricket.

Too many times, England have failed to make use of the Powerplays. Fifteen for no loss after five just isn’t acceptable in this day and age. At the English domestic level, sides play 40 overs, and as well as providing spectator friendly start times, this form has encouraged more aggressive cricket. Indeed, the most successful counties in this year’s competition were those who approached their batting similar to a T20 match.

While 50 overs require a little more restraint, there are important lessons to be learnt from this modern approach. Run-rates were frequently higher than seven per over, and the most aggressive batsmen were richly rewarded. In this batsmen-friendly age of flat, covered pitches, players have realised that they don’t need to wait for a bad ball to hit boundaries. Young players like Jos Buttler and Jason Roy embody this Twenty20 generation which pushes the boundaries of limited-overs batting. They are yet to make their way onto the English ODI scene. However, in the wake of England’s whitewash, I hope that their time isn’t too far off. India have already seized upon this mentality, and it’s time for England to do the same. To take English ODI cricket to the next level, fearless batting is the order of the day.

From Balachandhran S, India

The use of two new balls will make things even more tough for spinners © AFP

A few weeks ago, the ICC framed new rules for the game. Some of the new rules were long pending. Some were even understood and applied without the legitimacy of the ICC ink. But some were, lets just say, strange.

I know that a lot of focus has gone towards the use of runners by batsmen. Perhaps rightly so. Just because it is difficult to independently and impartially assess the fitness of a batsman, you cannot arbitrarily ban runners. If a facility is being misused then the easiest solution is to withdraw the facility. The tougher option is to tighten things up and have a fool proof solution. The ICC appears to have gone for the easier option. Why, pray, can we not have an independent physio sitting on-call to determine the extent of the injury of the batsmen? If it is a cramp, then no runners need be allowed. If it is a serious injury that hampers his running, then by all means allow that!

However the more interesting rule change from a pure cricketing point of view - and hence pretty uninteresting for the media hounds - is the introduction of two new balls from each end in the ODI game. Now, I don’t know which expert(s) the ICC is relying on to determine that the ODI game needs a special dose of adrenaline and other such invigorating items to extend its shelf life. Fact is - the recent World Cup was extremely well watched and well covered. No panic buttons need be pushed.

The only people who would welcome this rule would be the batsmen! Is that not ironic? The ball will keep coming onto the bat and the pace of run scoring is probably going to be dramatic. 400-run innings are probably not going to be exotic anymore!

And what about the long suffering tribe of spin bowlers? They practically have no say now! We will now get to see more of the Ashwin-type of bowlers who specialise in bowling with the new ball. Not that there is anything wrong with Ashwin. But the traditional virtues of spin bowling - the wiles and guiles are probably going to be conspicuous by their absence. And all this because the technology is not currently there to make a white ball last for greater than 30-odd overs! The mind boggles.

Now onto the subject which has had cricket lovers in thrall in recent times - the DRS! For a long time, this writer has maintained that the DRS is welcome. The game of cricket definitely needs it. But there is definitely large scale misunderstanding of what construes the DRS. Because ball tracking systems such as Hawk-Eye bring about a huge load of spectator involvement, many people tend to equate such technology with the entire spectrum and scope of DRS. The ICC has quite rightly ruled that the ball tracking systems are not there where they need to be and hence made the implementation of such systems optional. It would have been even better had the ruling said that ball-tracking systems will be put to rigorous and publicised testing in domestic events and a path be drawn to chart out the possible implementation of such systems at the senior level when all the kinks have been worked out.

Nevertheless there is still reason to cheer for the ICC - at least on this count. It is going to be interesting to see how many countries claim that they can afford systems such as Hot Spot. But this is most definitely a step in the right direction.

From Apoorv Singhal, India

A bilateral series? Enough is enough © Associated Press

Is it a coincidence that the recently concluded World Cup produced many more close encounters than the countless never-ending bilateral one-day tournaments do? Well the answer is fairly obvious. It was a World Cup. Even if a group stage match is not of much consequence, a loss hurts. And the media and the fans climb the captain’s back about how ‘the team is shaping up’ and how ‘this is probably the best chance of winning the World Cup’. Ravi Shastri is somewhere in the vicinity, pointing out how ‘the players should pull up their socks’ and how ‘a loss was just what the doctor ordered’. So if the ageing cricket experts didn’t make it clear enough by now, the recent results are now shoving the evidence down our throats. One-day cricket needs context to flourish.

Holding ridiculously long bilateral one-day tournaments after the World Cup will restore the situation back to its boring best, and we will once again start questioning the future of the one-day format. Domestic Twenty20 tournaments have been successful in garnering significant amounts of revenue for cricket boards, and so there is no need to hold 58 one-day matches between India and Sri Lanka every year under the excuse of generating revenue for ‘developing the game at the grass roots’, and then have the BCCI explain after a series defeat why India doesn’t have any fast bowlers that can keep a batsman rooted to the crease.

Imagine playing for your country. Imagine standing alongside your team-mates, not listening to but feeling your national anthem envelop your senses, with your fingers tinkling with anticipation as you wait to play an important match in the World Cup in front of a roaring crowd. Or imagine walking out to play yet another match against a team whose wicketkeeper you have come around to knowing better than your neighbour, with the series winner already determined, and two more matches to go before you can see your son whose face you can’t quite recall. Ask the English, they would know. You wouldn’t be surprised to see Andrew Strauss starting to hallucinate during a match one of these days and start stroking Daryl Harper’s head, softly singing ‘Sleep away, my angel’.

How many great one-day matches can be traced back to bilateral one day tournaments? Not many. How many times have you seen Munaf Patel throw himself to stop a boundary in one of those innumerable one-day matches against Sri Lanka? Well, that is an unlikely case even in a World Cup match. However, the point is, more matches will be close if more is at stake. If India play Pakistan after a gap of a year, with no injured players and the best eleven representing each country, the interest and revenue the match would generate would not be far behind the same achieved in a five-match series against the same team after having played them just three months ago.
Someone explain it to the managers and administrators analysing bar graphs and pie charts on their smart phones. I didn’t share a room with Dennis Lillee when he was playing the Ashes, but I’m willing to bet my bottom dollar he used to wake up with a spring in his step, his hands itching to get hold of the ball and bowl his heart out. And though I don’t share a room with Ashish Nehra either, I don’t think I would see him jumping around the room in the morning in anticipation to play yet another match against Sri Lanka.

We can’t only have the World Cup for one-day cricket, but we can certainly eliminate many redundant bilateral tournaments. The question of revenue generation is a ridiculous one. If you hold a 15 match one-day series between India and Australia in India, each and every one of those matches will generate a great deal of revenue, but that does not mean that we start doing that. If we would leave it to the businessmen cum administrators to decide the cricketing schedule, the cricketers’ sanity could be in trouble. Let the poor blokes get some rest.