India win battle on negative bowling

Close on the heels of winning the first round in the Mike Denness affair, India succeeded in another campaign when the International Cricket Council agreed to make a change in its laws to check negative bowling tactics on Wednesday.

The small but significant change in the standard playing conditions will allow the umpires to intervene in case a bowler employs negative tactics like the one used by left-arm spinner Ashley Giles on England's tour of India earlier this year.

In a bid to utilise the rough outside the leg-stump, Giles repeatedly bowled way outside the line to master batsman Sachin Tendulkar leaving him with no option but to pad the deliveries away. The Englishman even succeeded in having Tendulkar stumped for the first time in his Test career with this tactics.

His success and the fact that the tactics was not bad in law enabled his team to justify Giles' strategy but it led to calls for bringing a change in the laws to prevent such negative ploys.

ICC's Cricket Committee (Playing), chaired by Sunil Gavaskar, has now made a change allowing the umpires to declare such deliveries as wide. The conditions relating to the law on wides has been proposed to be re-worded, removing the reference to the ball "going wider".

"This change will give the umpires the power they feltthey needed," Gavaskar was quoted by the Guardian as saying.

Mail Cricket Editor