Sunil Gavaskar urges Sourav Ganguly to implement Major 'Rule Change' in Cricket for Bowlers

Former India player Sunil Gavaskar has urged cricket authorities to introduce changes that restore balance between bat and ball, arguing that the modern game has tilted heavily in favour of batters.

The India legend pointed to shorter boundaries, stricter field restrictions in white-ball cricket, and more powerful bats as key factors making life difficult for bowlers, especially fast bowlers, since the rise of T20s.

Gavaskar, a batting great himself, has specifically called for a redefinition of the wide ball rule for bouncers. He believes the current interpretation - where a delivery going just over the batter's head in normal stance is called wide - is unfairly handicapping pace bowlers.

"There's the 'wide ball' call for a bouncer going barely

over the batter's head. This is like asking a fast bowler to bowl with one hand tied behind his back. C'mon, give him some leeway. After all, with boundary lengths being shortened even though there's enough space to push them back, the bowlers are being short-changed, and now, with this interpretation where the ball is called a wide if it goes above the batter's head in his normal stance, the quickies are being handicapped even more," Gavaskar wrote in his column for Sportstar.

He suggested allowing an additional margin of roughly one foot - about the length of a bat handle - above the batter's head in stance. This, he argued, would encourage fast bowlers without compromising fairness.

Gavaskar recalled his own role as former ICC Cricket Committee chairman in reversing a controversial rule that had banned bouncers in limited-overs cricket.

"This takes me back to when bouncers were totally banned in limited-overs cricket. So, we saw batters who would usually be batting at number nine or 10 in Test cricket being promoted to bat at three or four as so-called pinch-hitters in the 50-over game," he wrote.

"They would merrily swing their bats and clobber bowlers of the calibre of Wasim Akram, Waqar Younis, Curtly Ambrose, Courtney Walsh, Allan Donald, Brian McMillan, Javagal Srinath, Zaheer Khan, Venkatesh Prasad, Andrew Caddick and company, to all parts of the ground, knowing nothing would come back at their heads. "

He noted that restoring one bouncer per over per batter helped eliminate the pinch-hitter trend and returned a vital weapon to bowlers. Gavaskar questioned why batters face no restrictions on shots while bowlers do.

"A good batter should be able to score off a bouncer, which is about a bat handle's height above his normal stance. That might even up the battle slightly in a format where, more often than not, even the best fast bowlers in the game are in for a hiding," he added.

The former captain appealed directly to current ICC Cricket Committee chairman Sourav Ganguly to consider easing conditions for bowlers in the next meeting.

"So, c'mon Sourav Ganguly, when you chair the next ICC Cricket Committee meeting, spare a thought for the bowling fraternity too," Gavaskar concluded.