Former India opener Gautam Gambhir has said that in cricket matches in post-COVID-19 world players the players would need an alternative for saliva to shine the ball and believed that the game would not witness any other change apart from that.
Gambhir’s comments come at a time when the ICC is reportedly contemplating to prevent the use of body fluids on the ball to contain the spread of the novel coronavirus among the cricketers.
“I don’t think a lot of rules and regulations will be changed, you can probably have an alternative for the usage of saliva — apart from that I don’t think so many changes will happen,” said Gambhir on Star Sports show Cricket Connected as quoted by IANS.
After an ESPNcricinfo report stated that ICC during its meeting considered the use of artificial substances like vaseline to shine the ball in order to keep the players away from using saliva and sweat to prevent the spread of the novel coronavirus, speculations have gone wild about the new development in cricket.
Earlier, the Indian Test team vice-captain Ajinkya Rahae had refused to give an outright opinion and chose to wait to see what the officials decide.
Veteran cricketers like David Warner and Harbhajan Singh criticised the consideration. While Warner said the ban on saliva was not enough to contain the spread of the virus, Harbhajan opined that saliva and sweat were important components for cricketers to shine the ball.
Among others, batting great Sachin Tendulkar said players would anyway be wary of using saliva to shine the ball, while Pakistan legend Waqar Younis supported the use of spit.
Retired fast-bowlers like Ashish Nehra and Michael Holding dismissed the whole idea of not using saliva and sweat and slammed the governing bodies for even considering such a plan.
Explaining the need to use saliva and sweat, the 2011 World Cup-winning pacer said that both were used to not only shine the ball but to make one side of it heavier as well which helps the ball to reverse swing. And according to him, the vaseline doesn’t do that.