New Delhi, May 12: India's legendary limited-overs opening pair of Sachin Tendulkar and Sourav Ganguly stitched together 176 ODI partnerships throughout the course of their careers in which they scored 8227 runs at an average of 47.55. And BCCI President Ganguly feels they could have scored at least another 4000 runs with the current ODI rules.
The International Cricket Council (ICC) on Tuesday reminded the fans about the great Indian duo of Tendulkar and Ganguly with the above statistics on their official Twitter handle. "No other pair has crossed even 6,000 runs together in ODIs," the tweet read.
The 'Master Blaster' took note of the stats and said they would have probably scored more runs had the current rules applied during their playing days.
"This brings back wonderful memories Dadi. How many more do you think we would've been able to score with the restriction of four fielders outside the ring and two new balls?" tweeted Tendulkar.
Ganguly was quick to respond to Tendulkar and said: "Another 4000 or so...2 new balls...wow...sounds like a cover drive flying to the boundary in the first over of the game...for the remaining 50 overs."
In contemporary times, an ODI inning is played with two new white-balls from each end. When it comes to field restrictions, an ODI inning is divided into three powerplays.
In the first powerplay from overs 1-10, only two fielders are allowed outside the 30-yard circle. In the next 30 overs, i.e. from 11-40, four fielders are allowed and in the last 10 overs, five fielders are allowed outside the 30-yard circle.
Tendulkar, in fact, has been a strong critic of usage of two new balls in an ODI inning. "Having 2 new balls in one-day cricket is a perfect recipe for disaster as each ball is not given the time to get old enough to reverse. We haven't seen reverse swing, an integral part of the death overs, for a long time," Tendulkar had said way back in 2018.