Australian legend Shane Warne proposes interesting rule changes to aid bowlers

Shane Warne

Australian spin bowling legend Shane Warne has suggested some interesting changes to rules in the game of cricket in order to redress the balance between bat and ball. Over the last decade or so, batsmen have increasingly found conditions across the world to be heavily loaded in their favour, leaving bowlers with very little room to make a substantial impact.

Warne, who took a colossal 708 wickets from 145 Test matches, proposed increasing the size of the stumps as it will give bowlers a bigger target zone. He also wondered why the size of the ball has not been changed for over 100 years while there has been constant tweaking to the size of bats.

“For over 100 years we’ve never changed the ball … We’ve changed the size of the bats. Why not change the ball?” Warne said.

Another of his interesting proposals was to suggest the removal of fielding restrictions in one-day cricket and allow bowlers to bowl as many overs as they want.

“No fielders inside the circle, have them wherever you want. And I think bowlers can bowl as many overs as they want,” he added.

Adding weight to ECB chairman Colin Graves’ recent suggestion to reduce Test matches to four-day affairs, Warne opined that Test matches should be shortened to four days as it will lead to more exciting cricket and perhaps bring audiences back to the longest format.

He also added that T20 cricket should only be played at the domestic level and not at the international level considering the cramped international schedule where players who are regulars across all three formats have very little time to rest and recuperate.

While many of these changes have been mooted by other people in the past, Warne’s standing in world cricket due to his international exploits will perhaps make the ICC consider some of these proposals in the near future.