The International Cricket Council's (ICC) temporary discontinuation of using saliva on the ball has been combined by Cricket Australia's (CA) own mandate for its players to not put sweat on it either in what will be their first taste of tighter on-field restrictions during the England limited-overs trip.
However, left-arm pacer Mitchell Starc said given that for a while bowlers haven't enjoyed any swing in white-ball cricket, its maintenance through the traditional method wasn't as much of a headache as is in Tests with the red ball even before the COVID-19 pandemic wreaked havoc upon all of us.
Read Also: Maxwell relishes confidence from team management on return to Aussie set-up
And so, he feels the additional regulation for Australian players to not apply sweat, which is allowed for other countries by the ICC, from their head, face or neck is not that big an issue.
"It's probably not something that's too relevant in white-ball cricket," Starc told cricket.com.au. "Once that new ball starts to go, you're trying to keep it dry anyway. It's more of a question for red-ball cricket."
The Australians have had the no-sweat, saliva ban imposed ever since they got back to training actually, with CA extra careful and intent on negating any possible chance of on-field Coronavirus spread.
Starc said the team will be using the warm-up matches in the build-up to the start of the three-match T20I series on September 4 as an effective indicator of what's in store for them under new playing conditions. The tour also features three ICC Super League ODIs.
"No doubt we'll find out what it's like in these practice games and if we need to revisit some planning around it, I'm sure we'll have a chat before the series gets underway," he said.
"We haven't been able to use sweat or saliva back in Australia so that was pretty simple. Slightly more lenient here with the bowler allowed to use sweat from certain places. It's not a huge issue in white-ball cricket, I don't think."
"I think we saw a bit during that England (Test) series, Jofra (Archer) using some sweat off his back and that sort of thing. If the world stays as it is for a little while, those restrictions will still be there."
"That saliva one will probably be around for a lot longer anyway. It's one for the red-ball team to talk about when we get to that point, but at the moment we're pretty good," Starc concluded.
