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The allrounder has had a storied career, which he has now put into a book, but hopes there’s at least one chapter still to complete

Alex Malcolm25-Oct-2024The tone in Glenn Maxwell’s voice changes when he talks about Test cricket.It’s not what you would expect from the author of some the greatest innings ever played in coloured clothing for Australia. The 201 not out in Mumbai, which he relives in great detail in his soon-to-be-released autobiography , written with Adam Collins. The 40-ball century against Netherlands. The 51-ball 2015 World Cup century against Sri Lanka. The impossible chases of Old Trafford, Bengaluru, Guwahati and Hobart. Maxwell could quite rightly dine out on those stories for the rest of his days.There is a myriad of off-field stories, too, some deeply personal. The broken leg. The golf-cart concussion. Severe mental health challenges. A miscarriage. Maxwell speaks with honesty and vulnerability about all of it and how it has shaped him through his 36 years.Related

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But long after the words have been printed, and the book hits the shelves, Maxwell is hopeful another chapter will be written. He has not given up on his dream of adding to his seven Test matches.That sentence in itself is striking. He hasn’t played Test cricket for seven years. He has not played a first-class game since July 2023 and has played only two in the last five years.He is nowhere near the conversation to play in the upcoming series against India, despite a top-six spot being available. But the carrot of the Sri Lanka tour in January has been dangled in front of him and he is all-in on chasing it after coming within touching distance of a place in the XI on the 2022 tour.”I think if I gave up on that Test dream now, I don’t think I’d be doing justice to that younger Glenn Maxwell who was dying to put on the baggy green when he was a kid,” he tells ESPNcricinfo. “And I think while there’s still a glimmer of hope, I’ll keep going for it.”Maxwell’s Test career is currently a story of what might have been. There is a sense when you speak to him, and when you read his book, that his brief tastes, and the many near-misses on Test selection that he details, have built up just as much scar tissue as the hardware holding his broken ankle together.

“If I gave up on that Test dream now, I don’t think I’d be doing justice to that younger Glenn Maxwell who was dying to put on the baggy green when he was a kid”

“I think the hard thing with Test cricket is, when I grew up, that’s all I wanted to do,” Maxwell says. “I definitely got my chance at Test level a bit prematurely. It all happened really fast when I got my chance to debut. It was just a whirlwind. I had no idea what I was doing. I probably hadn’t had the experience at first-class level that I would have liked.”And then when I came back in 2017, I felt like I was a ready-made first-class cricketer and was really at peace with my game and where I was at. A lot of these things in Test cricket are timing. Adam Voges is probably the perfect example. He came in and he averaged 60-odd [61.87] in his Test career. He got his opportunity when he was at the top of this game.”I suppose the thing I’m proud about in my Test career – I was able to sort of fight back at different times, get back in squads and be really resilient that way.”Voges’ story is a source of inspiration for Maxwell. Voges made his Test debut at 35 and played 20 Test matches, scoring five centuries, including two doubles. However, he got his opportunity in 2015 after scoring 1358 runs at 104.46 in the 2014-15 Sheffield Shield season. Only three batters have ever had a better Shield year and scored more than his six centuries in a single season.Maxwell has only made seven first-class centuries in his 69-game career, including his lone Test century in Ranchi. The lack of hundreds has been used against him from a Test selection standpoint. It is a notion that irks him. He detailed a frustrating exchange with selector Trevor Hohns in 2017-18, when he backed up his March Test century in India with scores of 60, 64, 45 not out, 278 against an international-standard New South Wales attack, and 96 across four consecutive Shield games while batting at No.3 for Victoria.Maxwell brings up his Test century in Ranchi in 2017•Associated PressMaxwell queried Hohns on why he wasn’t considered to play in the Ashes.”The answer was blunt: not enough tons,” Maxwell writes. “It’s the only time I’ve come close to losing it in a situation like that.”Maxwell no longer has to worry about such sentiments among the current Australian selection panel. They have said publicly that Shield cricket bears no relevance to Test conditions in Sri Lanka. They have also said that Australia’s ODI and T20I specialists, who miss a lot of first-class cricket due to white-ball duties, should not have their lack of Shield cricket held against them.It is the type of bespoke management that Maxwell appreciates and has led him to making a quiet return to red-ball cricket via Victoria’s second XI, where he scored 14 and 10, before hopefully making his Shield return after the two white-ball series against Pakistan. The leg injury remains a big part of his careful management.Maxwell enjoyed the red-ball return without the pressure of needing to perform and believes he can get up to speed quickly to the rhythm of red-ball batting if he’s selected on the tour of Sri Lanka.

“I might sort of have this persona on-field where it all looks confident, everything looks all sweet, but it’s not always like that behind the scenes”

“The interesting thing about last week, even just playing the second XI game, was having a few technical changes and working through them, having a few different sets of eyes looking at your batting, and just trying to work your way through that has been really enjoyable,” he says.”I remember in 2022 [in Sri Lanka] the first couple of net sessions that I had working through all those cracks, and working through your different techniques of facing spin that’s exploding, was so enjoyable. And it doesn’t take long when you’re really experienced in those conditions to work out a way to play over there.”It’s probably what makes Cameron Green’s success over there so extraordinary, the fact that it’s the first time he’s played Test cricket over there in those conditions, and he was so successful and strong-minded in the way he was going to go about it. It takes a strong mind to have success over there. I’d just love to be over there.”Maxwell’s mental-health journey is fascinatingly recounted in the book. He is very open about the challenges he has faced throughout his career.”I hope people can get a better idea of the different anxiety I’ve probably had,” he says. “I might sort of have this persona on-field where it all looks confident, everything looks all sweet, but it’s not always like that behind the scenes. There’s so much that sort of goes into it, and there’s a lot of conversations, a lot of thoughts that are going on. And it’s not always as smooth as it seems.”1:43

Where does Glenn Maxwell rank in T20 cricket?

One of his darkest periods was between 2018 and 2020, which coincided with Justin Langer’s tenure as coach. Maxwell is not shy in outlining his turbulent relationship with Langer back then, detailing his personal perspective of a series of incidents, including his omission from the 2018 Test tour of the UAE, the 2019 World Cup, where he was subjected to a bouncer barrage in the nets that he felt was coach-directed, and a fiery exchange in early 2020 when Maxwell said the coach accused him of faking an elbow injury to miss a tour.But Maxwell sees a clear delineation between their relationship as player and coach and their friendship away from the game, which included a lot of golf and some great conversations about life.”We’re still on great terms,” Maxwell says. “We had a really good friendship, and I suppose his coaching tenure at the back end, I probably didn’t get out of him exactly what I probably needed at that time.”The other roundabout relationship he writes about is with Steven Smith. He reveals that the pair did not see eye to eye when Smith was the national captain. But Maxwell also notes he was partly to blame.”I’ve learned the amount that you invest in relationships is the amount you get back,” he says. “And I think potentially, looking back on early relationships, they might have been a lot of one way. I reckon I expected a lot of things to go my way, without actually investing back in.

“Maxwell queried [selector Trevor] Hohns on why he wasn’t considered to play in the Ashes. “The answer was blunt: not enough tons,” Maxwell writes. “It’s the only time I’ve come close to losing it in a situation like that”

“Steve is probably the one who we’ve come… probably not full circle, it’s never like we weren’t friends, it was we weren’t as close as we are now. Now we’re messaging most days, we play golf together, we enjoy each other’s company, and we spend a lot of time talking about not just cricket stuff, but off-field, real things as well.”Maxwell is as comfortable as he has ever been with his place in the world as a husband, a father and a cricketer. He is adamant his story is not completely told, and has no plans to retire anytime soon. He feels he is in the perfect head space to handle a Test match recall. But he knows there are no guarantees, and he says it won’t define his career.”I’m at peace with pretty much everything,” he says. “So it sort of makes it a little bit easier to go out there and not get too wrapped up in the moment, not to put too much pressure on myself to do certain things, and hopefully that just is able to bring out the best in me.”Whatever happens at the back end of this summer, whether I get picked or not, I won’t judge that as a tick or cross on my career. It’s just going to be another thing. As I said, I’d love to be over there, and if I do get the opportunity, I won’t be putting too much pressure on myself.”

On Wednesday, the seamer showed if there is a bit of help about, he could be genuinely incisive in the powerplay

Karthik Krishnaswamy29-Sep-20221:38

Arshdeep Singh: ‘The main motive of our team is adaptability’

What makes the new ball swing in one place and not in another? Cricket has grappled with this question for well over a century, and while all that grappling has given us numerous hypotheses, we have no conclusive answers.Bhuvneshwar Kumar may have puzzled over this question as well, if he watched the Thiruvananthapuram T20I in Bengaluru, where he is undergoing “conditioning-related work” – as per the relevant BCCI press release – at the National Cricket Academy after being rested for the series against South Africa. Having just completed a three-match series against Australia during which the new ball hardly ever swung, he may have felt a complex surge of emotions while watching Deepak Chahar and Arshdeep Singh bend it this way and that at the Greenfield International Stadium.Related

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Bhuvneshwar bowled 42 balls in two matches against Australia and conceded 91 runs, while picking up just one wicket.In Thiruvananthapuram, Chahar and Arshdeep reduced South Africa to 9 for 5 in the space of 15 balls. Both got the ball to swing both ways, and the pitch gave them further assistance by way of its two-paced nature. The jaffas were getting batters out – Arshdeep, for instance, dismissed a pair of left-handers back-to-back, nicking off Rilee Rossouw with an awayswinger before clean-bowling David Miller with one that swerved wickedly late in the other direction – but so were wide and seemingly cuttable balls that stuck in the surface.If you were a swing bowler, or a fast bowler of any description, these were conditions made for you.KL Rahul, who helped steer India to their target of 107 with a painstaking unbeaten 51 off 56 balls, described the conditions as being among the toughest he has ever batted in in a T20 game. “The balls were flying, it was nipping around, it was two-paced,” he told the broadcasters after the match. “Everything that can be hard for a batsman, that was the wicket today.”Given how much help there was for swing and seam bowling, how much can India take away from their fast bowlers’ displays as they finalise their plans for the T20 World Cup? In particular, where does Arshdeep currently sit in the hierarchy of quicks they have picked for that tournament?Of the four specialist fast bowlers in India’s 15 for the World Cup, Bumrah – if fit – is probably the only one guaranteed to start their tournament opener against Pakistan at the MCG. If they’re in their best physical shape and bowling rhythm, Bhuvneshwar and Harshal Patel would probably start alongside him. But neither has been at his best in recent months.Arshdeep has done all the right things ever since getting called up•BCCIThe break Bhuvneshwar is getting during this series is a welcome one ahead of the World Cup, given that he has played more T20Is (24) than any other India player this year. But while that should refresh him, India might still be worried about one facet of his bowling when he returns: his performances at the death (overs 17-20). Seven of the 14 most expensive overs he has bowled in this phase during his T20I career have come this year – four of them .India haven’t always had their first-choice fast bowlers operating this year, of course, and the presence of Bumrah and Harshal should reduce Bhuvneshwar’s death-bowling workload considerably, freeing him up to bowl most of his overs in his best phase, with the new ball. But Harshal hasn’t looked at his best since returning from a rib injury, and his death-overs economy rate for India this year (11.00) has been nearly as high as Bhuvneshwar’s (11.37).This is where Arshdeep has really stood out; he has a death-overs economy rate of 7.38 in T20Is this year, easily the best among all India seamers to have bowled at least four overs in this phase – Hardik Pandya, at 10.25, is a distant second.Arshdeep’s end-overs numbers are spectacular, but not hugely surprising, since he earned his India cap specifically because of his accuracy, control and smarts in that phase. But he has shown he can do more; you will remember that he began his T20I career with a new-ball maiden in Southampton, and over his first 12 T20I games he has done quite well in the powerplay, as a first-six-overs economy rate of 7.50 would suggest. His numbers aren’t nearly as spectacular as Bhuvneshwar’s in this phase – an economy rate of 5.68 while taking 18 wickets at an average of 15.77 this year – but we’re comparing a rookie bowling outside his favoured phase with one of the world’s great powerplay bowlers.And when there is a bit of help about, as there was in Thiruvananthapuram, Arshdeep can be genuinely incisive. He is an unusual sort of left-arm quick, more proficient at swinging the new ball away from the right-hander – genuinely swinging it, and not just slanting it across – rather than into the stumps. This is why he gets so close to the wicket while bowling left-arm over – it minimises the angle across the right-hander, so he can keep lbw in play, just about, while bowling outswing – and also why he loves going round the wicket.In Thiruvananthapuram, though, he showed he can also bowl the other one – two of his wickets came from balls that swung away from the left-hander, and he constantly kept Aiden Markram guessing which way the ball would go while seldom wavering from a tight initial line.These were, in short, excellent signs for India. The conditions may have been extremely helpful, and as a consequence, it is hard to say whether Arshdeep’s display made any real difference to his chances of starting at the World Cup. But he has done all the right things ever since getting called up, and on Wednesday night he did all the right things once again.

Because of the slower pace of the game, big, banana swing is far more common in the women’s game, almost defining its entire vocabulary

Sidharth Monga03-Oct-2024Cricket balls swing. Swing makes the game richer. It might be the least challenging of the movements bowlers access, but visually it is arguably the most spectacular. It occurs over a longer trajectory than seam and turn off the surface, and it is quicker and higher in degree than the subtle drift and dip of the spinner. Extra swing is among the first things that stand out in women’s cricket.Think Shikha Pandey’s inswinger going as wide as the wide guideline at one point before ducking back in to take the top of Alyssa Healy’s off and middle stump, or this hypnotic highlight reel of Megan Schutt hooping the ball in again and again.Cricket balls swing more in women’s cricket. This is not just a visual impression created by the many reels and Twitter videos we see of the banana swing in women’s cricket. Data backs what we see. We compared swing in all T20 cricket in the year 2023 in both men’s and women’s cricket. The median swing in men’s cricket was 0.54 degrees, but in women’s cricket it was 0.74 degrees. That is not a small difference.It is natural that the ball should swing more in women’s cricket. Rabindra Mehta, a NASA scientist who once shared the new ball with Imran Khan at school, has spent a significant amount of his time studying swing. A “side force” makes the ball swing, Mehta has written in his papers, which is generated because of a pressure difference between the two sides of the ball split by a seam that is not wobbling or wobbling very little.Mehta’s experiments have shown the maximum side force is generated when the ball is bowled at 112.65kph, the seam is tilted at 20 degrees, and the backspin on the ball is 11 revolutions per second. Some later papers suggest 108kph generates the maximum swing. About half the deliveries bowled in women’s T20 cricket in 2023 were between 100 and 110kmph, and 21% in the 110-120 band.There are other factors such as height and time in the air. Mehta once contended how in the 2007 men’s ODI World Cup final, Chaminda Vaas didn’t find swing but Nathan Bracken in the same match did because Vaas didn’t release the ball “in the optimum altitude”. Because of the slower pace in women’s cricket, the ball spends more time in the air.Related

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Rabindra Mehta: The science of swing bowling (2018)

As a combination of more time in the air and the ideal side force, both because of the slower pace compared to the men’s game, women’s cricket is the ideal playground for swing. Or at least conventional swing. Old-ball swing is slightly complicated. For the sake of convenience, we call all old-ball swing reverse swing these days. The literal reverse swing needs a tilted seam and high pace that women, at least so far, don’t ever hit. Contrast swing, though, is achievable at their pace with an upright seam provided the ball is ready. There is hardly any time for this to happen in limited-overs cricket, and women play so few Tests that there is hardly any contrast swing of note.Now we need to make ourselves a little less comfortable about our trust in what we think we see. The casual, almost unanimous assertion is that women swing the ball predominantly into the right-hand batter. Pandey, whose inswinger to Healy got dubbed the ball of the century by many including Wasim Jaffer, is the first one to dispel the notion despite being an inswing bowler herself.”I don’t really agree that there are only inswing bowlers,” Pandey tells ESPNcricinfo. “There are a lot of outswing bowlers as well. Shabnim Ismail, for example, is a seam bowler, but she does get the ball to swing out. Marizanne Kapp is someone else who swings the ball both in and out. Katherine Brunt used to get nice shape out. Towards the later part of her career only, she learnt how to get the ball to come in, but that was very subtle, not banana swing. So probably what you’re trying to say is banana inswing.”As a kid growing up, my bowling action was such that my hand was very close to my knee. I didn’t use to get that big inswing when I started. But then I realised that in domestic circuit, the ball coming in was the one that was fetching me wickets. So subconsciously my action became more and more inswing-friendly because I was getting wickets. And at that age you were not really thinking about anything else, you’re just thinking about the results.”Shikha Pandey: “Subconsciously my action became more and more inswing-friendly because I was getting wickets”•Annesha GhoshWhen Pandey made it to international cricket, she realised within a year that just big booming inswing was not going to cut it. People began to take the off-stump guard and cover the stumps by getting outside of the line. Bowled and lbw were almost out of the picture. She started to work on the ball that straightens, and now has that variation, which basically uses angles on the crease and slight technical adjustments.The point is, there are enough outswing bowlers in women’s cricket too. “Look at the current scenario,” Pandey says. “In India there is Pooja Vastrakar, who bowls outswing and wobble-seam to bring the ball in. Renuka Thakur is mostly inswing. In England, Lauren Bell inswinger, Natalie Sciver mostly seam bowler. Kate Cross again, wobble seam to get the ball to come in, otherwise she gets the ball to shape out.”In Australia, Megan Schutt inswinger. Darcie Brown is a tearaway bowler, genuine outswinger, doesn’t swing the ball in at all. Tayla Vlaemink is fast, 125ks, doesn’t need swing. Kim Garth, again, genuine outswinger, but has worked on the wobble-seam delivery. South Africa, Shabnim is now retired, but as I said she bowled beautiful outswing. Marizanne gets the ball to move both ways in the air. Ayabonga Khaka is an inswinger.”Preliminary data – just counting the number of bowlers of each kind – seems to suggest there is a much more even split of inswing and outswing in women’s cricket than widely assumed. We dig deeper. The following bell curve suggests no partiality towards inswing. If anything, the peak of the graph tells us the likeliest ball we are to see in women’s cricket is a small outswinger. Minuses are outswing for the right-hand batter, pluses are inswing. It probably is indeed true that we have let highlight reels cloud our opinion here.ESPNcricinfo LtdIn India, though, inswing bowlers are easier to find. Krithika Venkatesan, talent scout at Royal Challengers Bengaluru, says young bowlers are mostly inswing bowlers, and they tend to run the risk of getting injured when trained to add outswing to their arsenal.Beyond the visual appeal, though, the extra swing and everything that comes with it has a significant impact on almost the whole vocabulary of women’s cricket. Almost everything in fast bowling is described in relation to good length. For men, we all tend to agree that a good length is a pitching point from where the ball can hit the top of the stumps.This hack doesn’t quite work for women. The height of the stumps is 0.71m. On average, in 2023, men hit that height when the ball bounced 6-7m from the stumps. It is consistent with what we have largely agreed upon in men’s cricket: 6-7m from the stumps is good length, 7-8m is the hard length, and 5-6m the aggressive good length. For women to hit the top of the stumps, they have to pitch in the 7-8m band, closer to 8 than 7. Now, at their pace, against batters of shorter stature, if they bowl that length, it gives batters enough time to play off the back foot.Women, thus, have to operate more on the literal definition of good length: one where a batter is not close to the pitch of the ball if they play forward, and hurried if they go back. So everything gets pushed a metre fuller in women’s cricket.Women’s cricket uses a smaller ball and shorter boundaries, but the pitch and the stumps remain the same. It becomes a completely different sport. Women fast bowlers have to bowl fuller. And because they swing it more, fast bowlers train to bowl a 4-5.5m length, and then adjust to the given conditions. Now this sounds a little too ambitious, but they believe the movement brings in jeopardy. A drive even slightly on the up comes with risk. Nor do women batters charge at the quicks as often as men do.Some coaches believe that batters’ hitting technique has far more room for improvement in women’s cricket than the bowling. It is evident in how bowling slow rollers is not good enough in women’s cricket anymore as batters have learnt to generate their own power into shots.In T20 cricket in 2023, women fast bowlers bowled 12.48% of their deliveries in the 4-5m zone. Men went into the aggressive 5-6m good length only 9.61% of the time. Women extracted better results from 5-8m lengths before the shorter balls started going for more runs. These are not great trends for their optimism. The batters will still keep unlocking their hitting prowess; how bowlers catch up is something to keep an eye on.

Since the 2019 World Cup, Pakistan have scored at less than five an over in the first powerplay – and another such showing very nearly cost them against Netherlands

Danyal Rasool17-Aug-2022In this age of suffocating scrutiny for elite athletes, it is unsurprising most of them perpetually have their guard up, allowing no emotion and barely any candour to slip through. Any signs of weakness may be exploited by opponents, so most opt for mundane, media-trained answers in a predictably formulaic way, such that almost all public interactions meld into one.Pakistan captain Babar Azam, as his responsibilities and public profile have exploded, has picked up this art particularly skilfully, his defensive guard off the pitch almost as impregnable as it is on it. But even then, his first comment after Pakistan sealed a somewhat nervy 16-run win in the first ODI against Netherlands in Rotterdam saw a rare slip of that shield.”Definitely,” he replied when asked at the post-match conference if the emotion was more of relief than delight. That might not be too surprising – the answer to almost every question put to Babar starts with that word, almost a verbal lubricant to get his thoughts in order. But the tone revealed the sincerity behind it this time, and he went on to double down, saying, “It’s a huge relief.”In fact, few in the team or the support staff would regard the game as anything other than an imperfect performance, with the flaws lying in all the wrong places. It might be okay, for example, to lose wickets going out all guns blazing on a pacy flat track, because the philosophy behind it could be in tune with the direction in which white-ball cricket has been heading, but here they would err in the other extreme.Under a hot, sunny sky, Pakistan won a toss both captains wanted desperately to win in their eagerness to bat first. Pakistan’s top three at the moment is perhaps the most consistent in the world, scoring almost two-thirds of the team’s runs and all their 12 ODI centuries since the 2019 World Cup. Their confidence could not be higher, and yet what transpired in the first half hour suggested anything but.Shadab Khan made a 28-ball 48 to end Pakistan’s innings on a high•PCBPakistan managed just three runs in the first four overs, choosing to be circumspect in the extreme against what was little more than tidy, consistent line-and-length bowling. That is the lowest four-over total for Pakistan since a 2018 Asia Cup game against India, and – to put it mildly – Aryan Dutt and Vivian Kingma are no Bhuvuneshwar Kumar and Jasprit Bumrah. Imam-ul-Haq and Fakhar Zaman poked and prodded with little intent of scoring during those early stages, and by the time Imam was put out of his misery, Pakistan had scored just ten runs in six overs.It’s tempting to look at the scorecard and Fakhar’s final score, a run-a-ball 109, or Pakistan’s final tally of 314, and dismiss such concerns as exaggerated because they caught up and won the game. And while there is empirical evidence to suggest some players benefit from early caution that allows them to bed in before unleashing their more destructive side, no one could really argue that nine runs off his first 21 balls was as brisk as Fakhar could have gone in the powerplay against a Dutch attack.While these early passages of play often tend to be forgotten towards the back end of a game because they happened about eight hours prior, it was that first half-hour that brought Netherlands tantalisingly close to a remarkable upset. In the end, Pakistan didn’t really “catch up” because plenty of runs were left out in the middle, and it was only sensational death bowling from their quicks that bailed them out.Pakistan’s much more pressing concern in ODI cricket is their middle order, but that should not excuse the top three from all scrutiny. The field restrictions in the first ten overs are an opportunity to get off to a flying start, but for all of Pakistan’s top-order brilliance, it’s a trend they have never quite latched themselves onto. Since the 2019 World Cup, Pakistan have scored at less than five an over in the first powerplay. Taking the aerial route has proved even more elusive; among the 20 ODI sides, their five sixes in 18 innings in this period are the joint-fewest with Zimbabwe.ESPNcricinfo LtdThere are obviously reasons for the high levels of early conservatism. A lack of confidence in the batters coming lower down invariably places more pressure on the top three, who are likely to prize their wickets much more highly than sides with more balanced batting line-ups. This is where the potential weakness of the middle order begins to bleed into other areas of the team, and potentially hinders their ability to play the brand of modern ODI cricket that is likely to see them at the business end of an ODI World Cup.However, the fact that such extreme circumspection forced its way so significantly into a contest against a side like Netherlands in a series with relatively little pressure should set alarm bells ringing. It showed their middle-order problem is becoming increasingly challenging as more teams look to exploit this weakness. It is why Shadab Khan’s recent form in the middle order is likely to be far more valuable to Pakistan than another Fakhar hundred or Babar half-century.Few Full Member sides would have allowed Pakistan to sneak away with a win in that first ODI. Having let the middle order issues persist for so long, it was perhaps inevitable they would begin to metastasise. There’s still time for remission, but with the 2023 50-over World Cup bearing down, it’s running out fast.

With batting records being broken regularly in IPL 2024, bowlers need a little something to make it a slightly more even contest

Nagraj Gollapudi22-Apr-20243:07

How has Impact Player rule affected bowlers?

The sympathy for bowlers in the IPL has never been as strong as in this season, where batters have pulped everything thrown at them and broken records with scary frequency. We will know soon, at the T20 World Cup in June, if international teams will deploy a similarly aggressive approach to their batting, but the need to equip bowlers with something that can help them counter the battering has never felt more urgent.ESPNcricinfo asked three of the sharpest minds in the game – Ricky Ponting, Ian Bishop and Tom Moody – if allowing one bowler an extra over in addition to the regular quota of four is a feasible option.You can also have your say via the poll below.