ODIs tougher for players than Tests, says Dean Jones

MELBOURNE - Former Australian batsman Dean Jones has described one-day cricket as “much tougher” than the longer version of the game.

Jones stressed that the limited-overs format tested the mettle of all players because the demands of the game exposed any deficiencies.

“If you bat for the first 15 overs, you need the power to hit the ball over the top and to get boundaries,” the Sydney Morning Herald quoted Jones, as saying.

“If you bat for [many of] the 50 overs, you need the fitness to run between wickets. In the field, if you can’t throw the ball 75 metres into the keeper, you’ll be sorted out. As a bowler, if you’re hit for four and you don’t have the guts to bowl the yorker the very next ball, you’re going to be sorted out,” he added.

Jones said that, unlike Tests, the frenetic nature of one-day cricket demanded players needed to make things happen.

“In a Test I can go ‘block, block, block’ and think ‘I’ll wait to get him after tea’, but in one-day cricket I have to do it now,” Jones said.

“A lot of people say you can’t say Test cricket isn’t harder, but I found I was more knackered at the end of a one-dayer. [It] was a lot harder game to play,” he added. (ANI)