Geoff Lawson wants ball-tampering legalised

Getty Images

Sydney: Dec 20, 2012
 
Former Australia fast bowler Geoff Lawson wants ball-tampering laws to be tweaked in order to allow bowlers to pick the seam and bring a parity between the evolution of the cricket bat and ball.
 
Lawson was reacting to Australia pacer Peter Siddle being unofficially charged by the visiting Sri Lankan team of ball-tampering during the first Test at Hobart. Man of the match Siddle picked up five wickets in the first innings and four in the second in the game and Lawson termed Sri Lanka’s unofficial complaint as “mischief-making”.
 
The former Pakistan coach was commentating for ABC Radio in Hobart during the match and said that he saw nothing untoward in the footage which was sent by Sri Lanka to the International Cricket Council (ICC) for examining. Lawson called for legalising changes to the ball given the evolution of the bat over the years.

Add Cricket Country as a Preferred Source

“‘If you’re not allowed to touch a cricket ball, let’s have standardised bats,” Lawson was quoted as saying by the Sydney Morning Herald. “If you look at a ball in the SCG museum, it’s exactly the same as now but if you look at cricket bats, we’ve got bazookas now where we had feather dusters before. That is the biggest concern, the imbalance,” said Lawson.
 
“The argument is you should be able to do whatever you want with your fingernails, or whatever, because if the ball moves it’s much better for the game, because batsmen have now got this huge advantage, which they didn’t have. Restrict it to natural alterations, but let’s do it.

“I don’t believe you should be able to adulterate the ball to a ridiculous degree but you should be able to do something to it, surely.” The current laws state that it is illegal to do anything “‘likely to alter the condition of the ball”.
 
“It’s just overkill,” said Lawson. “If you graze the surface with your fingernail when you pick the ball up, you’re in trouble. It could be interpreted that way.
 
“‘The other part of the law is that the umpires decide whether the ball has been changed to a certain extent. It should be left in the hands of the umpire. Opposition teams should have no say. It should be a nonsense if the opposition complains about it. Unofficial complaints are just mischief-making.”

Meanwhile, Siddle’s teammate Mitchell Starc came to the former’s defence saying that there was no need to tamper with the ball due to the abrasive nature of the wicket.
 
“‘That wicket was abrasive enough, and taking chunks of the ball by itself, so we didn’t need to help the ball at all. We took the new ball and there was a massive chunk out of it after the second over,” said Starc, adding that the Australian team immediately dismissed the claims.
 
“‘We pretty much dismissed it straightaway. We’re not thinking too much about it.”