Sachin Tendulkar underlines the reason why ODIs are getting monotonous and boring, comes up with a solution

Cricketing great Sachin Tendulkar feels One Day Cricket is becoming monotonous and boring and even came up with a solution to how to make it interesting. The veteran of more than 18,000 ODI runs, Sachin feels given how the 50-over format is played at the moment, it is unlikely to garner attention and crowd towards it the way it should.

Speaking exclusively atThe India Today Conclave, Sachin said the introduction of two new balls was one of the major reasons why this format is dying a slow death. Elaborating on the same, he added with two new balls, the pacers got robbed of a chance of doing reverse swing -something that worked as an x-factor back in the day.

“It's getting monotonous without any doubt. There are two parts. One is the current format and the next is which I feel it should be played. Let me talk about the current format which has been there for a while now. When you have two new balls, it eliminated reverse swing. Even though we are in the 40th over of the game, it's actually the 20th over of that ball," Sachin Tendulkar said. "But I think it only starts reversing around the 30th over or so.”

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Stressing on how today’s cricket has become batting-friendly and how the bowlers, not just pacers, but spinners also have struggled to get going, the Master Blaster said,

"There was a bit of discolouration and the ball gets softer. When the ball started discolouring, picking the shiny and the rough side becomes difficult. That element is missing today because of two new balls."

However, it’s not just that Sachin had only complaints against the format he succeeded the most in, he also had a solution as to how the crowd can be drawn into watching ODI cricket. Sachin suggestedinstead of playing two innings of 50 overs each, the match must be divided into four quarters of 25 overs. With that, how it is in Test cricket, both teams will have two innings to bat in but instead of 20 wickets, each team will have ten wickets and if one team is all out in the first quarter, they won’t get the chance to bat in the second innings.

"Coming to the second bit, we should be playing 25 overs first. Divide it into 4 halves, like in Test cricket. In Tests, you have 20 wickets here you only have 10 wickets. If you are dismissed, you are out of the game for the next 25 overs as well. You can't come back and bat,” Sachin said. "Why I am saying this because we played a tournament in Sri Lanka where we played 118 overs without any result. On the first day, Sri Lanka batted first and we played 10 overs, the match was rained out. The match was again called off on the following day. We almost played 118 overs without any result,” he added.

"Here, if you have 25 overs and the other side comes and bats 25 overs, here at least each side has completed 25 overs.

"Right now, the game is becoming too predictable. From the 15th over to the 40th over, there is not enough momentum. There are not enough eyeballs. It's getting boring. How do we balance that out? How do we balance out the dew factor? If a captain has lost the toss if he has to bowl second in wet conditions, it becomes really, really difficult,” Sachin continued.