Former Pakistan fast bowler Shoaib Akhtar has expressed his frustrations with the “batting-oriented cricket” being played in the current era. Jokingly, he also stated that Sachin Tendulkar would have recorded “1 lakh runs” had he got the leverage the batters do now.
Shoaib Akhtar slammed the ICC for introducing rules in favor of the batters. He isn’t happy with the fact that two balls – one from each end – are being used in ODI cricket that makes reverse swing negligible, while the pitches in limited-overs international have produced more runs than ever before.
He is also displeased by the fact that 3 reviews are given to teams in each innings of a Test, and also with the limitations on the number of bouncers. He believes all such rules introduced by the governing council in the last decade have made the sport one-dimensional.
Sachin Tendulkar remains the leading run-getter in international cricket with an astonishing 34,357 runs cricket across formats. However, Shoaib Akhtar amusingly said that the Master Blaster would have crossed the 1 lakh runs landmark had he got such batting-friendly rules and pitches during his time.
“You have two new balls. You have made the rules stricter. You give so much leverage to batsmen nowadays. You now allow three reviews. If we had three reviews during the time of Sachin, he would have made 1 lakh runs,” Shoaib Akhtar said during a chat with former India head coach Ravi Shastri on his own YouTube channel.
“I really pity him. The reason I pity Sachin Tendulkar is he initially played against Wasim (Akram) and Waqar (Younis), he played against Shane Warne, then he faced (Brett) Lee and Shoaib (Akhtar), and later he played the next generation of fast bowlers. That’s why I call him a very tough batsman,” he added.
“It’s very batting-oriented cricket nowadays,” the Rawalpindi Express stated.
Shoaib Akhtar is currently playing for the Asia Lions in the Legends League cricket tournament in Oman, while Shastri is the commissioner of the same tournament.
