This season of the IPL has witnessed 200-plus totals on more than 30 occasions and the matches heavily skewed in favour of batters. In such a scenario, are high-scoring matches getting a little boring?
Former New Zealand pacer and current Sunrisers Hyderabad’s assistant coach James Franklin said it is up to fans to decide if high-scoring matches in the IPL are “boring”.
“From my point of view, I’m deeply entrenched in the game. I’m getting consumed by what’s happening in the here and now,” Franklin said when asked if the high-scoring contests in the IPL are becoming boring.
“The opinion of whether it’s getting boring or not is probably up to the likes of yourselves and the consumers that watch it.
“We’re dealing with the here and now in terms of this in real time, this is how the games are panning out at the moment that are high scoring. We have to, from a coaching and a team point of view, work generally with that,” he added.
Few days after amassing a 260-plus score this season, Delhi Capitals also registered the lowest total when they were shot out for 76 by Royal Challengers Bengaluru on Monday.
Franklin said it will be interesting to see if the future editions of the IPL would have more for the bowlers as the game is “very skewed”.
“I didn’t actually watch last night’s game; I caught up with it on a scorecard (later). I couldn’t really quite believe what I saw,” Franklin said.
“At the moment, in IPL particularly, we’re getting so used to these 200-plus scores, so to see a scorecard totally opposite end of the spectrum was quite amazing.”
“It’ll be interesting to see how it moves going forward; not just through this tournament, but potentially future editions of IPL — whether you start to get it a little bit more balanced back towards the bowling side of it,” he said.
Franklin added, “It does feel at the moment, things are very skewed in the batter’s favour. Whether that’s the pitches, the impact player rule, (or) the skill set of the batters (that) are just very, very high right now and the bowling is trying to catch up (and) whether it’s the pitches, yeah. So, let’s see, let’s watch this space.”
