A lot has changed with the advancement of game over the years. Here are a few of those :
- Bat Size :
This picture sums it up. Bary Richards is comparing his bat he used in 1970 with the one David Warner uses . This has made batting a lot easier than it used to be. Batsmen get away lot of time even after playing mistimed shots. To the top of it , numerous times top edges go for a six.
2. Introduction of DRS :
Who can forget this. A lot of such matches used to happen before where umpiring blunders changed the outcome of the game. Through DRS , the number of wrong decisions have certainly gone down if not been vanished completely.
For that to happen players like MSD should be more in number.
3. Quality of bowling:
Earlier these were the best bowlers in the world who were not dependent on conditions to take wickets. The conditions did affect their game but there was not a huge gap between their home and away performance.
Now these are the best bowlers. There is a massive gap between between their home and away performance. They are a class act as their numbers show but the World will give more respect to those who are not condition dependent. Though we still have people like Dale Steyn which is good to see.
4. Role of fitness :
Earlier there were a lot of players like Inzamam Ul-haq who never thought a lot about fitness and as it turned out it never affected their performance also.
But now there are a lot of players like these. With the introduction of three formats, growing importance of fielding, more cricket being played all over the world fitness is now important part of cricketer's life.
Smaller grounds , introduction of day-night tests, power-plays ,there are a lot of things that were not present 20–25 years back. Change is the law of nature and there is nothing wrong in that. But I personally think any of the change should not affect the contest between bat and ball because that is the heart of cricket.