Cricket is increasingly becoming batter-dominated since the arrival of T20s. Boundaries have been shortened, tougher field restrictions have come in while bats have become more powerful. India legend Sunil Gavaskar isn’t particularly happy with the way the game is tilting in favour of batters. Gavaskar, a batting icon himself, has asked for certain rule changes to be made in the game in order to bring the balance back. To start with, he wants the no-ball rule to be redefined.
“There’s the ‘wide ball’ call for a bouncer going barely over the batter’s head. This is like asking a fast bowler to bowl with one hand tied behind his back. C’mon, give him some leeway. After all, with boundary lengths being shortened even though there’s enough space to push them back, the bowlers are being short-changed, and now, with this interpretation where the ball is called a wide if it goes above the batter’s head in his normal stance, the quickies are being handicapped even more.
“If that rule can be tweaked to allow the quick a margin of one foot, approximately the length of the bat handle, above the head while in his batting stance, that would give the fast bowler some relief and encouragement to fire in some more,” Gavaskar wrote in his column for Sportstar, asking for margins to be increased for bowlers.
Gavaskar then highlighted his own efforts in getting the International Cricket Council (ICC) to overturn the rule to completely bar bowlers from bowling bouncers. But, that isn’t where the story ends, he argued that if batters are not being restricted to hit certain shots, why are bowlers?
“This takes me back to when bouncers were totally banned in limited-overs cricket. So, we saw batters who would usually be batting at number nine or 10 in Test cricket being promoted to bat at three or four as so-called pinch-hitters in the 50-over game.
“They would merrily swing their bats and clobber bowlers of the calibre of Wasim Akram, Waqar Younis, Curtly Ambrose, Courtney Walsh, Allan Donald, Brian McMillan, Javagal Srinath, Zaheer Khan, Venkatesh Prasad, Andrew Caddick and company, to all parts of the ground, knowing nothing would come back at their heads.
“This is not to pat my back, but when I took over as Chairman of the ICC Cricket Committee, the other members joined me in bringing the bouncer back in the format, albeit one per over per batsman. The pinch-hitters disappeared. More importantly, the bowlers got one of their weapons back. You don’t restrict a batter from playing any shot, do you? So why restrict the bowlers from trying all the varieties that they possess?” he wrote in the column.
Former India captain Sourav Ganguly, who chairs the ICC Cricket Committee, has been asked by Gavaskar to think of making bowlers’ lives a little easier when he heads the next meeting.
“That’s why there is a case to give the speedsters a little more leeway as far as the definition of the wide bouncer is concerned. A good batter should be able to score off a bouncer, which is about a bat handle’s height above his normal stance. That might even up the battle slightly in a format where, more often than not, even the best fast bowlers in the game are in for a hiding.
“So, c’mon Sourav Ganguly, when you chair the next ICC Cricket Committee meeting, spare a thought for the bowling fraternity too,” he concluded.
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