The "Tie-Breaker"

The cricket follower in me got a major shock yesterday when I realized that I was not even aware of an important rule in this world cup - the tie-breaker rule. Thanks to me wife, I know the rule now and I also want to comment on the same.

Well for those who are in the same boat, I was in till yesterday, this rule is applicable to only knock-out matches i.e. the semis and the final. For all other matches, if the score is tied, the result is a tie. The number of wickets or run-rate or any such criteria will not be considered which keeps it simple. Now in case of a semi-final or a final if the scores are tied at the end of the match, a bowler from each team will be asked to bowl five deliveries at the stumps and one who hits the stumps more number of times is the winner.

I am not sure what happens if there is again a tie .. maybe the bowlers keeping bowling 5 deliveries till the tie finally breaks. I somehow am not too comfortable with this rule. Who cares? (is that what you are thinking). Yes I know and I also realize that the probability of a tie happening in these 3 matches is very low and having some decent way to break that should be good enough. But I would have preferred if even batsmen and fields had been involved in this tie-breaker.

Imagine a team, that has won all its matches so far because it has a very strong batting line-up and some excellent fielders, has now landed up in the finals and guess what, it is a tie. And now it is asked to nominate one of its 5 not-s0-accurate bowlers to compete against someone like McGrath. Is that totally fair? I don't think so. Well you could argue there are many more aspects in cricket today that are not totally fair like the toss advantage in some grounds, use of DL method in certain circumstances, etc. But why add one more to this list?

I would have preferred if both teams were asked to bat for say 2 overs and whichever team scored more runs could have been declared the winner. In case of a tie, wickets could have been taken into account. Now I agree it would be tough to execute such a rule if it is a day match as you may not have enough light to bat and maybe that is one of the reasons why batsmen were not made a part f the tie-breaker rule !!

Give it a thought .....