MUMBAI: There have been plenty of good things-some great batting, bowling and fielding, good crowds for weekend games, lots of drama- on show by the half-way stage of the inaugural edition of the Women's Premier League.
However, a slight eyesore has been the shortened boundaries at both the venues-the Brabourne Stadium at CCI and the DY Patil Stadium in Navi Mumbai. In an attempt to ensure more high-scoring games, the BCCI has decided to pull in the boundaries by 5 metres-from the standard 65 to 60 metres. The move, which has resulted in even the edges carrying to the boundaries, hasn't gone down well with former Australian opener Rachael Haynes, who's the head coach of the Gujarat Giants in the WPL.
"The thing that really stands out to me is (that) the wickets are very flat and the grounds are very small. So, it's made it very tough for the bowlers. They haven't had a lot of margin for error. I think at this level as well, and perhaps in seasons to come, it would be nice to see the boundaries maybe be pushed out by a couple of metres because the nature of the players at this level and what they are capable of means that they are able to clear the boundaries very easily. And with the outfields being super-quick as well, although the grounds are dome-shaped, the ball just runs away," Haynes said.
Explaining her point further, the 36-year-old, who played 77 WODIs and 84 WT20Is and 6 Tests in which she scored more than 3,000 runs, said, "So, it's very tough for the bowlers when they're coming up against a batter who's striking them well and hitting the ball cleanly. I think the thing for me is that if mishits are going for six, that's probably not quite right. At this level, you've got to make sure that you've to hit the ball clean. So, the poor bowlers haven't been helped at times, but moving forward, definitely we could extend the boundaries a little bit just to help them out."
Haynes' view on the need to lengthen the boundaries in WPL was supported by former India off-spinner Nooshin Al Khadeer, who is the bowling coach of Gujarat Giants. "We need to understand that people want to enjoy 200 runs on the board, but at the same time the bowlers are getting penalized and things are being very harsh on them. There's hardly a margin of error for them. To a certain extent, I would say that overall, the bowlers are doing quite well. Keeping all these things in mind, any bowler who's going to have an economy rate of around 8 to 9 is doing a very good job," Khadeer said.
'Smriti doesn't need to prove anything to anyone'
Meanwhile, former India captain Mithali Raj, who's the team mentor at GG, offered words of encouragement to out-of -form India opener and RCB captain Smriti Mandhana. At Rs 3.4 crore the costliest player in the WPL auction, Mandhana has put together just 88 runs@17.60 in 5 games. To make it worse, she had led RCB to five consecutive defeats.
"Honestly, being in and out of form is part of every athlete's, every cricketer's career. The player that she is, I don't think she needs to prove anybody what calibre of a player she is. It's just a matter of an innings for her to come back into form," Raj said. Is the burden of captaincy affecting her batting? "It's up to a player to embrace captaincy. Everybody has a very different way of doing that, and I'm sure she'll find her way," said the retired legend.
