Dont tweak one-day cricket too much: Martin Crowe

Martin Crowe, who came up with Cricket Max, feels that not too much needs to be tinkered with when it comes to one-day cricket, contary to what a lot of people believe.

I feel that to make the one-day game a more even contest between bat and ball, either the number of fielders allowed outside the 30-yard circle when the fielding restrictions are on needs to be increased or the number of overs for which fielding restrictions apply needs to be reduced. My guess is that batsmen are more likely to vote against the second option. Given that for 15 overs of a 50-over game, only two fielders are currently allowed outside the inner circle, I think this needs to be increased to four fielders.

The number must actually also be proportional to the number of overs the restrictions exist for. In a rain truncated game of say 35 overs, when the fielding restrictions are for seven overs, obviously you cannot allow four fielders outside the circle. The ratio could be 1:4 (approximately) wherein for every four overs of fielding restrictions, the number of fielders allowed outside is one. So in the above rain restricted game, there'd be two fielders outside. Obviously the possibility that there is only one fielder allowed outside will never happen since that would mean four overs of fielding restrictions, which in turn would imply a game of 15 overs a side, which is obviously not a completed one-day international, as of now at least!