ODI Cricket Strategy - Rolling Substitutions

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Greg Chappel tried rolling substitutions to some extent but got bogged down by big names. Substitutions have come to stay and teams that manage to susbtitute and preserve key people would go a longer way to win a higher percentage of matches than teams who play all key players in every match..

This was not what Greg did. Greg tried to keep changing players for undecided spots, which is a very different strategy than rolling all people to keep them healthy as well as leave a strong bench strenth.

In fact he rolled those non key people even after they performed and key people were not disturbed even when they didn’t perform at all. In fact, only the form should be the criteria to get into the team. And inf act some cricketers didn’t get enough chances despite some success, like Gambhir, Mongia, Sreesanth, Balaji, and Irfan Pathan (who should’ve played even on the basis of just his batting).

A possible strategy could be:

1. Play 5 batsmen and 5 bowlers. This could be 4-4-2-1 (batsman-bolwer-allrounder-keeper)

2. Send the best men forward (have you heard in hockey or football, if they protect their best men by keeping them behind). So Tendulkar and Ganguly should open (if Sehwag is kept out for some time).

3. Only successful cricketers can continue to play matches (more than 3), if their continuous average is 50 or they average 2 wickets per match or they get xyz points. As soon as this continuous string is broken, they are rested.

4. Rest all cricketers after every 3 matches for a match (success to be defined by a point system), and bring them back for another 3 matches (2 matches if unsuccessful earlier).

5. Cricketers who are unsuccessful after a set each of 3, 2 and 1 matches are to be dropped.

6. Point system to be clear to all, since transparency in selection makes it fair to everyone.

7. Similar point system in the Domestic cricket makes it easy for cricketers to get selected, and not be dependent on selector’s whims and fancies.

If this or similar system comes into play, we should get some solid results.