New Hybrid Cricket Match Required

Perhaps with Australia dominating world cricket so comprehensively at the moment it is time to introduce a new hybrid form of the game.

Firstly, Australia destroyed England, and Wales let it be said, in the recent Ashes tournament 5-0.

The two teams then played a Twenty20 match in which Australia scored an international record score of 221, at the rate of 11 per over, and then restricted the Poms to about seven runs per over in their run chase, winning by 77 runs. So much for the "hit 'n giggle" game, as it has become known.

Now we are back to the more traditional from of limited overs cricket, 50 overs per side. Australia beat England fairly easily again.

As I write this Australia are taking on New Zealand in a limited overs match in Tasmania. They are on top at the moment.

Perhaps we need to handicap the Aussies. In taking on England, the second-best Test-playing nation in the world, we could introduce the TwentyTest format. Australia bats for twenty overs, England bats to Test match standards, i.e. bat until you get out, then Australia gets another twenty overs before the Poms get a chance to bat again. Do you think it would work? It would certainly bring the Aussies back to the field.

That said, the Aussies will probably lose a couple of matches and not be the dominators of the world in all forms of the game for too much longer. Tiger Woods was nearly unbeatable but he is human and it is more difficult for a team to maintain its dominance continually. The West Indies Test teams of the 80s were almost impossible to beat but it didn't last. It'll last for a while, hey, three Kiwis have been dismissed since I started writing this piece, but not forever. Might make the game a bit more interesting though.