25 July,2009 11:50 AM IST | | PTI
Former South Africa speedster Allan Donald feels the International Cricket Council (ICC) should legalise ball tampering to prevent the growing hegemony of batsmen in world cricket.
"The ICC would shoot me for saying it but, with the wickets that we play on and the dying breed fast bowlers are becoming on these flatter wickets, I would say we do need some sort of defence mechanism, something to fall back on to say 'Right, we can do this. We can now prepare this ball to go'," Donald told Cricinfo.
However, the 42-year-old, currently the coach of Warwickshire where he had served with distinction as a player, is aware his plea would have very little effect.
"That (legalising ball-tampering) quite simply would never happen," he said. Ball tampering raised quite a storm during Donald's time and the pacer conceded that bowlers did it to get reverse swing.
"There is no doubt guys tampered with the ball," he said of the fast bowlers of his time. Donald is not the first one to champion the cause of ball tampering. In the mid-1990s, Sir Richard Hadlee too had advocated legalising ball tampering.
"As long as the bowlers or fielders use whatever means they have on their persons, I don't see anything wrong with it. I'm talking about the use of a finger nail to scratch the ball, not bottle tops or those sorts of things," Hadlee had written in a newspaper column at that time.
Talking about reverse swing, Donald said the best method was to let the ball rip without artificial help. "I wouldn't bite it," he said. "One way is if the ball gets scuffed on one side, and there is a tiny little chunk that is missing, you pick it up and just keep that side dry and keep working on it, while shining the other side very heavily without putting any moisture.
"The whole team needs to keep track of this and should know the ball is reversing and they need to shine one side. The bowler, because he is bowling, should keep his wet hands on this side while keeping the other side dry. That's all you need."
