The BCCI will meet all ten captains of IPL franchises, and the use of saliva by bowlers will be one of the main items on the agenda during the IPL 2025 captains meeting on Thursday, March 20, in Mumbai.
The annual captains' meeting and photoshoot will be held at the BCCI headquarters two days before the season-opening match in Kolkata.
The captains will be informed of regulations and broadcast media commitments at the meeting. Some of the important rules, such as two bouncers, retiring out, Super Overs, innings timers, 60-second clocks, impact players, waist-high full tosses, and the Code of Conduct, will also be addressed.
As per a report by Sports Tak, a source stated that BCCI has asked captains to discuss the use of saliva on the ball.
"It's their call. If they want to go ahead with it, we have no issue—we're okay with that. And if the ICC makes changes in the future, it will be for the betterment of cricket,” the source told SportsTak.
Since the COVID-19 outbreak, the International Cricket Council has forbidden the use of saliva, severely reducing fast bowlers' ability to induce reverse swing, which has long been a valuable tool in their armory. The rule was also implemented in the IPL and other T20 tournaments globally.
However, with the possibility of Covid-19 infections greatly reduced, numerous athletes and analysts have urged for the saliva restriction to be lifted.
Mohammad Shami, an Indian fast bowler, recently stressed the significance of enabling bowlers to use saliva to keep cricket balls shiny.
"We are trying to reverse (swing), but you are not getting the use of saliva into the game. We are constantly appealing to allow the use of saliva, and it will be interesting with the reverse swing," Shami said.
The senior fast bowler also highlighted the disadvantages of using sweat for reverse swing, noting that it makes the ball heavier.
Even legend Sachin Tendulkar had warned that the saliva prohibition would hurt bowlers and even advised using wax to shine the cricket ball.
"The game will change for sure. According to the new rules from the ICC, saliva has been banned, so how will the ball swing now or in the middle overs? In some countries, players don't sweat much because of the weather, so how will you shine the ball? For such situations, a box of wax can be given to the umpires. The ICC should decide how many grams of wax to give. Per innings, the quota can be set—whatever the ICC deems correct," Tendulkar told India Today in 2020.
