PCB endorses Sachin's idea of four-innings ODI

Karachi:

Endorsing Sachin Tendulkar's view of splitting one-day international matches into four innings with 25 overs each, the Pakistan Cricket Board has said that the proposal was a sensible one which can revive popularity of the format.

Sultan Rana, chief of PCB's domestic cricket department, who has also worked for Asian Cricket Council as a development officer, backed the proposal to split one-day international matches into four innings.

"If the International Cricket Council allows its members to experiment with this new format we will definitely be keen to try it out because our domestic structure is tailormade for this new concept," Rana said.

A member of the famous Rana cricket family in Pakistan, Sultan feels many countries would soon try to experiment with the four-innings concept in their domestic level events. "I think it is going to happen soon. Because by splitting one-day games into four innings will basically allow the ICC and other countries to make one-day matches as interesting and popular as Twenty20 matches are now," he said.

Dean can tell from the crowd noise whether a ball has been gathered in a fielder's hands, or spilled. "I have to work with the anchor," he said. "I am the guy who supplies, well, the colour."

And interestingly, he took the plunge to the job after he heard on radio a commentary of a cricket match in India. Fed up with the 'blind cricket' he was taught with a plastic-wrapped volleyball at the blind school he attended, Dean, 14 years of age then, one day tuned to a ball-by-ball commentary on radio. It was to change his life.

"There was a phenomenal noise in the background, 80,000 people in a stadium in India, people roaring. I realised it was cricket. I was fascinated," he said.

Dean pushed his way into the commentary box at Harare Sports Club in 2001 and was allowed to try out with the microphone. He never looked back.

Last month, Bangladesh were playing Zimbabwe when Dean heard that the visitors' captain had sent a fielder far down to fine leg after the Zimbabwe batsman Charles Coventry had smashed a four. "A sixth sense told me it was a double bluff," Dean said.

"He wanted to give the impression that the next ball would be a bumper, to make Coventry use a hook shot." As he suspected, the next Bangladeshi ball was a sneaky yorker.

"The thing about Dean is the intuition," said Andy Pycroft, the Zimbabwean opening batsman from 1979 to 2001. "The public love to listen to him. If he has the right person at anchor to support him he is brilliant."