 "England cricket team. Photo: @englandcricket")
It has been over 100 days since the last international cricket match was played, as most of the cricket-playing nations observed the lockdowns in their respective nations. Amidst this, to tackle the problems arising due to coronavirus, the ICC made a few rule changes which might smoothen the process of resumption of the sport, and one of those was allowing local umpires to stand in an international match.
In an exclusive interview to FanCode in their new chat show 'Unlock Sports', former South African captain Shaun Pollock applauded the ICC committee for this rule change. "Someone from India to be able to stand in a Test in Kolkata or someone from England to be able to stand in a home Test, Englishman, at Lord's or an Australian at the MCG, we've always been fighting for this in the committee so I think that's a good change," he said.
"Now with the DRS, you can send things upstairs. In the old days, maybe they were worried about biased decisions, but I think that's a thing of the past so that's a nice change in the right way."
The man with most wickets for South Africa also shared his opinion on the saliva ban. "For many years, people have used saliva but they've also used sweat. But in the current pandemic, with saliva, there is a risk that if a ball gets hit to the boundary and it may be thrown back by a guard who hasn't been tested, there could be something that goes on to the ball and then you put it in your mouth and you could end up with Covid and the whole Test series can be called off. So, for me, it does make sense."
The 46-year-old also talked about the new 3T Cricket format of Cricket South Africa as well as the England-West Indies series. "The idea is to try and incorporate three teams of 8. People have two innings and you get to compete, and it almost gives you an opportunity to come back, so it is something that they are looking to try.
"I think it's (Eng-WI) gonna be probably the most watched Test series in a very long time because people are being starved of the game so they'll be very keen to get out there and watch some Test cricket again. I think it will be a bit of a litmus test to see how things can unfold and how things can be managed to make sure that there's no issue."
