ICC medical committee ruled out using saliva for ball shining amidst COVID 19 scare.
There has been a debate going on about banning bowlers from using saliva for shining the ball when cricket resumes after the COVID-19 pandemic. The ICC is looking at ways to keep the players safe after the sport's resumption, one of them being a possible ban on shining the ball using sweat or saliva.
Australian cricketer David Warner recently shared that he is against this new rule as he believes that using saliva to shine the ball has been going on “hundreds of years” and feels that it is not the only way in which players can contract the virus whenever cricket resumes.
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“You're sharing change-rooms and you're sharing everything else, I don't see why you have to change that. It's been going around for hundreds of years now, I can't recall anyone that's got sick by doing that.”
“If you're going to contract a bug, I don't think it'd necessarily be just from that. I'm not too sure but it's not my place to comment on whether or not we should or shouldn't (use saliva to shine the ball). It's up to the ICC and the governing bodies to decide,” the left-hander added.
Some reports even claimed that administrators are "open to the option of allowing for the use of an agreed artificial substance to polish the ball under the supervision of the umpires", which amounts to ball-tampering as per the current rules governing the sport.
Thus, it will be interesting to see how the game goes on post Coronavirus as it will be one of the longest interval after which the cricketing activities would resume.
(With India Today inputs)