The ICC has imposed interim ban on usage of saliva to shine ball amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
Safety is paramount as international cricket is set to resume with the England-West Indies Test series on July 8 after COVID-19 hiatus. Therefore, ICC has banned the traditional practice of applying saliva on the ball to maintain its shine.
Notably, the apex body didn’t allow the use of artificial substances as a substitute move. No wonder, many former and current fast bowlers including Australia’s Mitchell Starc, Josh Hazlewood and Pat Cummins feel there ought to be an alternative to maintain the ball or else Test cricket would tilt heavily in favour of batsmen with swing hard to obtain.
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Sharing his two cents on the recent developments, Australia’s limited-overs skipper Aaron Finch said saliva-ban may affect only the longest format of the game.
“In Test cricket, there has to be some way to get that balance between bat and ball right. If the ball isn’t swinging and seaming, it’ll become a pretty batter-dominated game. It’s important to try and find what is right to get that balance,” Finch said in an interview facilitated by Sony Network on Tuesday (June 30).
He doesn’t see it making much of an impact in ODI cricket.
“With two new balls, the balls generally swing for an over or two at either end in one-day cricket. Then there's not a huge amount of reverse, because the ball stays quite new.”
In wake of the Coronavirus pandemic, cricket boards of Australia and Zimbabwe have agreed to postpone the two nation's limited-overs series, scheduled to be held down under from August 9 to 15.
Cricket Australia now plans to tour England for a series in September. Finch feels players will have to be mentally prepared to tour without much notice in the near future.
“As a player I know in my mind that I’m preparing to go to England to play. Whether that happens we’ll wait and see. We just have to be ultra-flexible, and there might be a tour that comes up on relatively short notice. Because we could get that and that’d be brilliant,” he said.
(With TOI inputs)