There Is No Justice In This World

ICC fails the fast bowling community yet again!

If one can draw an analogy, a fast bowler can be compared to a sales executive who puts in long hours under the sun with a rare overcast windy day coming to his rescue. Conditions are seldom in his favour, there is this nagging insecurity of getting replaced by a promising young talent but then such is his sheer willpower that he continues to win bread (read matches) for his family (read team) but then here is the catch, that bread which he earns, he doesn’t get acknowledged for it while the children (read batsmen) in the family having braved a tough childhood (read the morning session of the first day of play) are celebrated. One can say that society (read ICC) is such and unless it becomes more inclusive, the lower-middle-class sales executive (read fast bowler) will never get his rightful place.

ICC yet again failed the fast bowlers by announcing this Tuesday that “Players will not be permitted to use saliva to shine the ball.” ICC said, “A team can be issued up to two warnings per innings. But repeated use of saliva on the ball will result in a 5-run penalty to the batting side.”

The teams will stay in a bio-secure environment – private jets disembarking at private terminals, testing done on departure as well as arrival, a fortnight-long quarantine at luxury hotels with exclusive gym, swimming pool, restaurant & bar facilities, post which the practice sessions will start in small groups in an empty stadium, even the press conferences will be on Zoom Video Call! Despite all these measures in place, one still cannot disagree on the fact that there is elevated risk of transmission through saliva but where one can & must disagree is that there is no viable alternative suggested to level the playing field, albeit sweat which again depends on the playing conditions. There will be no extra coat of lacquer on the ball, the seam will not be made pronounced and no artificial shining agent will be used (it must be noted that last month, Australian manufacturer, Kookaburra claimed that it has made a unique wax applicator to shine balls during the epidemic). Fast bowlers, of course, cannot make use of their nails, they’ll be damned for it, but yes, they can make use of their sweat if, that is if they manage to.

This gives an undue advantage to the middle order batsmen. Once the ball loses its shine, let alone reverse swing there will be no swing in the air and fast bowlers have painfully learnt over the due course of time that it is futile to expect much when it comes to swing off the surface. The average of the middle order batsmen might tend to Bradmanesque proportions and so will the frustration of the fast bowlers who have long borne the brunt of such unjust rules which have mostly been tweaked in batsmen’s favour.

Despite advancements in safety gear for batsmen, a fast bowler is restricted in the number of bouncers he can bowl. A batsman can play outside his crease, take guard from anywhere on the pitch but the bowler is restricted by the popping crease and the return crease so that the guileless batsman doesn’t have to face difficult angles and by chance if the bowler oversteps, he is penalized for it whereas the batsman receives immunity for the next ball. Now, let us consider a batsman making a mistake, which say, is him searching out for an outswinger on the fifth stump line and missing the ball by a whisker. What punishment does he get for his error in judgement, none! The list is long. A batsman can switch hit anytime but the fast bowler must intimate the umpire who in turn intimates the batsmen if he plans to change his action. The introduction of two new balls have already negated reverse swing in limited over formats and to go with this, the batsmen have hijacked the outfield as well since only 4 fielders are now allowed outside the circle in the middle overs. The list doesn’t end here, if Adam Gilchrist decides to use a squash ball inside his glove on a flat track in Barbados, he is considered a genius but if Vernon Philander on a dead track in Galle scratches the ball, he is stigmatized forever. While the bats have become broader, the seam of the Kookaburra ball remains as flat as a pancake. While there is no such thing called toe of the bat as the entire bat is now one big sweet spot, the ball must be spotless of any marks. The boundaries have been brought in, the limited over matches are played on pitches which often resemble national highways and then there is this unfairly perceived notion of entertainment being directly proportional to an obscene slog-fest, the fast bowlers who are treated as second class citizens have much to fathom.

Last month, Australian pace spearhead Mitchel Starc gave a clarion call for an even contest between the bat and the ball in the COVID era. He warned that people will stop watching cricket and kids won’t aspire to become bowlers if the equilibrium is fiddled with. The revolution is in the air and it is time for the tail-enders of the world to unite and stand up to the custodians of the game, who it seems, have stopped respecting the art of fast bowling. It will be interesting to see how James Anderson, Stuart Broad, Kemar Roach and Jason Holder fair with the Duke ball in the Calypso’s most anticipated tour of the United Kingdom, which kicks-off in an empty Rose Bowl Stadium at Southampton next month.