One-ball endgame: Why teams are rethinking death-overs batting after ICC ball tweak

Virat Kohli (PTI Photo)

RAJKOT: It's time to recalibrate batting plans now that ODIs are being played with only one ball after the 34th over. With the ODI World Cup in South Africa less than two years away, teams are trying to gauge what a significantly older ball will mean at the back-end of an innings.Go Beyond The Boundary with our YouTube channel. SUBSCRIBE NOW! India's batting coach Sitanshu Kotak was upfront about the challenges posed by the revised playing conditions. Forming a new template is one of the goals for the team management in this series. The presence of Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli gives India an edge, as they are among the few active batters who grew up playing ODIs with an old, softer ball in the final phase of an innings.

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“We will have to adjust in the batting department. We have to try to set up one template based on how we play after this new rule,” Kotak said, adding that the differences become clear late in the innings. “We played 25 overs any way with each ball. After this rule, you don't feel the difference till the 42nd over, since it is 25 overs with one ball. We have to plan for the remaining eight overs,” he added. New Zealand opener Henry Nicholls was quick to point out the challenge his team faced. “At the end of our innings, the ball was obviously a lot darker and probably a lot softer as well, which made it harder to get away. It won't be as easy to score as much right at the end. You need to take on the bowling a little bit earlier,” Nicholls said.

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The management is studying the trend. The sample size is still too small to draw firm conclusions and there aren't many ODIs scheduled over the next 20 months. Teams may have to wait for harder surfaces to fully understand the effect of the older ball after the 34th over. White balls are not expected to turn as soft or as discoloured outside South Asia. “Looking ahead to the World Cup, there will be (new) plans about how you go about the powerplay and the 30-40th over period,” Kotak said, adding, “It will also dictate the bowling combination.”

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