Wednesday, July 28, 2004

A lot of things have been said about the bonus system and how India after winning 3  losing 2 in their 5 games have qualified leaving Pakistan in the lurch. I think Bob Woolmer is going overboard on this topic. I agree that the bonus point system might be flawed and needs serious rethink, but all the teams knew about this in the beginning. So if Pakistan have been robbed of a place in the finals due to just one off day and one abyssmal performance(122 all out), it cant be helped..they deserve it. So all these talks of cribbing over the bonus points system and talks that follow have no meaning at all..If at all they(pakis) were so concerned about it, they should have contested the rule being enforced in the first case.
Now the net run rate rule ( not lately the most followed first choice rule) was said to be flawed because it gives the team playing the last match a clear idea of the target of runs to chase or defend. They could not have two matches being played(like football) at the same time because of obvious commercial reasons. Now there are already many allegations against the present bonus point rule which makes me think that this is also going to be scrapped off soon. So then we will be left not having a definite metric to eliminate teams with same points in a tournament.

I suggest these changes to the bonus points system:

1. Only the winning team in a match gets bonus points if it is able to restrict the opposite team to a score whose difference with the winning team score is 50 or more than 50 runs. The winning team also gets bonus points if it can score a target set by the opposite team with a run rate of 6.5 runs or more.

2. Even after adhering to this metric if three teams have the same points then net run rate should be the main metric and net run rate of only the matches the three teams are involved. I am not sure if this clause is still there, because if this clause holds true Pakistan would not have have qualified irrespective of India getting the bonus points or not.( Thanks to  their paltry 122).

Abhi picture baaki hai mere dost !

Freaks Inc.. Bengaluru.. 15 years 2 months and 8 days later.. Agenda for the meeting: Day 1 1. Paying our respects to the beginning of time ...