Let's not seek thrills of T20 in one-dayers

As England, struggling with their batting, bowling and fielding, not to mention thinking, went down by 229 runs in Mumbai on Saturday night, there was little of the glee that accompanies an English debacle. Far be it from us to blame the inventors of the game, and then its reinventors via the bromantic spiritual movement known as Bazball.

They put all they could into the meltdown, even suggesting that had they known at the toss (when it was very hot and very humid) that it would be very hot and very humid in the afternoon, they might have chosen to bat first instead.

No, it was our own weighty expectations standing in the way. For some reason we allowed ourselves to assume that the ODI World Cup would serve up some excellent ODI matches; why, went so far as to speculate that this match-up, played out before a near full-house at the Wankhede, might just be one of them. We got a match so one-sided it could be classified as propaganda.

The game, such as it was, was set up by South Africa's total of 399. Earlier in the competition they racked up 428 in Delhi and 311 in Lucknow. Australia battered 367 in Bengaluru, England 364 in Dharamsala, Pakistan overhauled Sri Lanka's 344 in Hyderabad. I haven't gotten around to listing the remaining 300-plus totals: ten in 21 matches. The average rate of scoring in the 1979 World Cup was 3.54 runs an over; in 1999, it was 4.47. This World Cup has been galloping along at 5.84. The 266 sixes struck thus far in 2023 is already higher than the total from 49 games in 2011 and equal to the 2003 figure from 52; by the end, the tally will soar past the record 463 sixes of 2015.