The media representative of the ICC's cricket committee Shaun Pollock has said that the body is “working on something” to give bowlers “bit more leeway on wides”, particularly with batters often moving around the crease in limited-overs formats, reports ESPN cricinfo.
“If a batter jumps across [at the] last minute, it doesn't really work out for me,” Pollock told the media on the sidelines of the SA20. “I think a bowler, at the start of his run-up, needs to know where he can bowl it.”
“The current rule tends to suggest that if he [the batter] moves and it's that point of delivery where the batter is, and that's according to where the wide will be called, I want a little bit of a change. I want them to know exactly when they're running up why or how - how can a bowler be expected to change his game plan at the last second when he's bowling? He needs to have a clear idea where he can go.”
“So it's in the pipeline, we're all discussing. We need to give a little bit back to the bowlers.”
As things stand, though, the ICC's playing conditions specify that a ball should be called a wide if it “p asses wide of where the striker is standing and which also would have passed wide of the striker standing in a normal batting position”, and also, it is not a wide “if the striker, by moving, either causes the ball to pass wide of him, or brings the ball sufficiently within reach to be able to hit it by means of a normal cricket stroke”.
Bd-pratidin English/Tanvir Raihan
