India, Jan. 11 -- During the New Zealand innings in their first ODI against India at Kotambi Stadium, Vadodara, the broadcast drifted into a question cricket has been asking a lot these days: Is ODI batting easier than in other formats?

With India captain, Shubman Gill, having chosen to field first, the discussion was floated in by Harsha Bhogle. It was a broader format argument, and Simon Doull's answer was essentially a rebuttal to the idea that "easier" can be applied as a rule.

Doull's logic started with a comparison set: if ODIs were just simpler, the same statistical uplift should show up across the era's elite batters. But, he argued that it is only one name, Virat Kohli, who has some phenomenal ODI numbers, while the others in t...