I should say you are completely ignorant of how bats have changed over the years
No, they haven't. Just ask them. Matthew Hayden for example says that his pre-2000 bats were far inferior. Ponting thinks bats need to be regulated too. Cricketers have been professional athletes since
McGrath would get penetrated too. 80 mph on a length... the ducks in the Trent would be getting peppered.
Every bowler isn't going to be McGrath, but every batsman can hit it like Viv now which is precisely the problem.
There's been studies done on it actually. The 5x increase in sweet spot is from an article a couple of years old I don't remember. The MCC produced a short informal paper in May 2016 which said that a bat from 1905 had a sweet spot of 80 mm long while one from 2013 was 215 mm (that's length, not area) and the size of the edges went from 14 mm in 1905 to 18 mm in 1980 to 41 mm in 2013.
ftfy
McGrath like accuracy is not all there is to it. You have to adjust length and line all the time. You can't just try a yorker again and again because the batsmen move around. The ridiculous wide rule greatly limits the useful area for a yorker too (I reckon batsmen actually change the way they play to take advantage of the wide rule. There's no way that a wide should be called when the batsmen steps across and it passes where they were standing, as so often happens). And batsmen can predict yorkers and have shots to counteract them. It's hard in practice.
Are you talking about the ongoing series?
Cricket is definitely professional now and they train the batsman more for power. They understand training more now. Even Rugby hasn't caught on to strength done optimally for that long. It's clear the players are stronger with faster bat speeds now.
It's actually changed more even since Hayden's time. In 1980 you had pressed bats with the 18 mm edges, the in the late nineties they adopted the modern design with unpressed wood, more profiling and more thickness. It took until 2009 for edges to reach c.30 mm. In 2013 edges were c.40mm. That extra centimetre was added in as little as four years. I have a 2012 Kahuna with 33 mm edges, a teammate of mine bought a bat last year which makes mine look tiny, its edges are over 40 mm and it's much meatier. I started borrowing it regularly, if the outfield is fast you just need a gentle push to get four.
