T20 World Cup: Former Australia skipper Ian Chappell has said that the recently-concluded T20 World Cup saw teams chasing more matches and the toss played a big factor in handing an advantage to the side chasing.
Australia won the T20 World Cup 2021 after the Aaron Finch-led side defeated New Zealand in the summit clash in Dubai. “Australia finally won the major trophy that has eluded their grasp for more than a decade – the ICC Men’s T20 World Cup. They clinched the trophy by clouting deliveries to and over the boundary, while producing a mixture of bowling that combined just enough wicket-taking with the right amount of containment,” Chappell wrote in his column for ESPNcricinfo.
“They also had the good fortune to win the toss when it really mattered, in a tournament where the major matches too often became a “win the coin flip, win the game” event. That was one of the major flaws in a tournament that achieved quite a lot of success,” he added.
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Chappell also said that the lawmakers need to find a way that the teams winning the toss do not ending up having a big advantage in the shortest format of the game.
“There needs to be a wide-reaching survey into the changes required to improve the T20 format. To make it even more popular than it is, tournaments have to include a way to ensure the game doesn’t become a matter of winning the toss. There seem to be two widely diverging views on T20 cricket,” said Chappell.
“There is the long-term cricket fan’s fear that the game will become an all-power event that favours muscle-bound six-hitting batters in matches of the sort that are too often won by the chasing team. Then there is the opinion of the not-so-discerning fan, who is unworried by the seeming lack of contest between bat and ball and can’t get enough of the mammoth six-hitting,” he added.
The former Australia also suggested that the shortest format is quickly becoming just “entertainment” and there is a need for balance to be restored.
T20 World Cup: After Gavaskar, Chappell slams ICC for role of toss in T20 WC
“Then there is the balance between sport and entertainment. In my opinion the balance in T20 cricket needs to be somewhere in the vicinity of 60:40 sport to entertainment. At the moment it’s unbalanced and too much in favour of pure entertainment. The administrators need to find both the ideal balance between bat and ball and educate fans on cricket’s values,” said Chappell.
“It is fine when middled deliveries finish up in the stands but a bowler should be extremely angry if a blatant mis-hit still clears the ropes. This problem is not so pronounced on larger Australian grounds, but I’m not sure what genius produced the ludicrous mixture of better bats and smaller boundaries. This combination is reducing bowlers to virtual bowling machines. It is a serious slight on good bowlers and needs to be rectified immediately,” he added
