A good cricket question.

Chatting to Charles Laird just now and was asked "Why in a 50 over game can a batsman be allowed to bat the whole innings and score 200 or so but the bowlers are limited to 10 overs each?".

I think the limited overs game is all to do with runs and entertaining the public. What I mean by that, the pitch is "set-up" to favour the batsmen rather than the bowlers. It wouldn't do the limited overs game any good if a Steyn type bowler was allowed to bowl an unlimited amount of overs and the batting team was bundled out in (say) 10 to 15 overs.

Conversely, in Test cricket, the pitches favour the bowlers and the batsmen technique is tested. Here a bowler can bowl all day, provided he doesn't keel over and die from fatigue.

Economics I guess?

I'm sure Charles wouldn't run a sprinter over 3200m 4 days in a row

It is very stacked in the batsman's favour.

You could also say a batsmen could be out first ball so a bowler can bowl 59 more balls than a batsmen faced.

Craig Eudey wrote: It is very stacked in the batsman's favour.

I am certain the reason is based of fan satisfaction. You can only have 10 outs per innings while each batsman has the ability to hit boundaries as he likes, which involves the crowds - Imagine if Tahir could have bowled 20 overs - The game would be dominated by slow containing bowlers and excitement would drop to zip- Spectators game that gets women and men( Black South African men) to watch who would never have bothered before - GC is doing a similar thing soon with Racing and I think that will work too. I live really close to Willowmore park and most days when there is a long version of the Game the place is empty. I think a winning formula that does not need changing.

Willowmore Park isn't quiet, it's deserted. Barring the teams there are maybe three of us journos in the press box, two scorers, a caterer and security guard at the games. :lol: :lol:

At this moment in time you have to have basically 5 bowlers to complete an innings.
If you took that rule away ,would you not have teams loaded with extra batsmen?