Mitchell Starc wants ICC to consider shining wax post saliva ban

Mitchell Starc wants ICC to consider shining wax: The Australian spearhead has spoken against the game losing balance between bat and ball.

Australia spearhead Mitchell Starc has expressed concerns regarding uneven contest between the bat and ball resulting in people not watching the sport and kids refraining from becoming bowlers in the future.

Starc’s comments have come in the wake of ICC banning the use of saliva to shine a ball in a bid to prevent the spread of coronavirus among cricketers. “They’ve mentioned that it’s only going to be there for a period of time and then once the world gets back to a relatively normal situation then saliva can come back into shining the ball.

“But, if it’s going to be a window of time there, maybe then instruct people to leave more grass on the wickets to have that contest or if they’re going to take away a portion of maintaining the ball, there needs to be that even contest between bat and ball, otherwise people are going to stop watching, and kids aren’t going to want to be bowlers,” Starc was quoted as saying by ESPNcricinfo.

Starc, 30, also highlighted Kookaburra developing a shining wax as a replacement for saliva and how the same can be brought into use especially when wickets have been flat in the recent past.

“I think as we saw in Australia the last couple of years, there’s some pretty flat wickets, and if that ball’s going straight, it’s a pretty boring contest. I think Kookaburra have been developing a shining wax or something of the sort, so whether there’s consideration of that, there needs to be some [thought to] maintaining that even contest,” Starc said.

Mitchell Starc wants ICC to consider shining wax

While Kookaburra’s shining wax is yet to tested in a competitive match, allowing to use it will invite numerous debates for it violates the rule regarding ball tampering in cricket. Laying emphasis on the prevailing unusual times, the left-arm pacer believed the on-field umpires can control the use of shining wax.

“I understand that completely and hear what they’re saying in terms of a foreign substance, but whether that can be controlled by the umpires in terms of they have a portion of the wax and you can only use a small amount, I don’t know, but there needs to be a maintaining of the even contest.

“I understand what they’re saying with foreign substances and that it’s black and white in terms of that, but it’s an unusual time for the world and if they’re going to remove saliva shining for a portion of time they need to think of something else for that portion of time as well,” Starc added.

Apart from Starc, Australian all-rounder Marnus Labuschagne and Indian spinners in Harbhajan Singh and Ravichandran Ashwin have also been vocal on the ban on saliva in cricket.

About the author

Dixit Bhargav

Born and brought up in Pathankot, Dixit Bhargav is an engineering and sports management graduate who works as a Cricket Editor at The SportsRush. Having written more than 10,000 articles across more than five years at TSR, his first cricketing memory dates back to 2002 when former India captain Sourav Ganguly had waved his jersey at the historic Lord’s balcony. What followed for an 8-year-old was an instant adulation for both Ganguly and the sport. The optimist in him is waiting for the day when Punjab Kings will win their maiden Indian Premier League title. When not watching cricket, he is mostly found in a cinema hall watching a Punjabi movie.

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