Boult is still one of the very best bowlers in the world and his bowling has been fine. Santner is also one of the best bowlers in the world. Ferguson is excellent, Henry is very, very good. Sodhi bowls a bad ball in the over, but can be very effective in shorter format cricket. Southee is a year past retirement. Neesham never was. Shaheen Afridi who is the best ranked bowler in the world was taken to the cleaners too remember. As was Haris Rauf who people are also writing off despite being brilliant in fair conditions. In the last few months I have consistently seen the South African, Pakistan, and England bowlers labelled as ineffective, and they are just not in fair conditions.
It is pointless blaming the bowlers. Some of these pitches are rolled mud, yesterday's pitch looked like a piece of glass from the aerial shot. These lower bouncing pitches with no swing, seam or spin of any kind have an excruciatingly small margin of error (if any). Players can use bats that have all the meat at the lower end of the blade and just swing through the line. If you are Fakhar, you can swing your meat axe to balls outside off and launch them over mid-wicket with no fear because the ball is going to stay on its exact line, and bounce directly into your hitting arc.
This is a world cup for those strong burly hitters, and it is not a world cup for the technicians. 50 0ver cricket will indeed be a relic of the past if it is treated like an extended 20/20 of big hitting for fan value. I have my knickers in a twist as you can tell, because this is just not what 50 over cricket is about. Though tilted in favour of batting, it has always ensured that there is something in it for everyone, and in the past pitches like this have been declared poor, and taken off the world circuit until they are made more sporting. Even in India there has always been early swing (no seam), spin in the middle, and reverse swing late. We are getting none of that.
