Shaun Pollock the media representative of the ICC’s cricket committee, has said that the body is “working on something” to give bowlers “bit more leeway on wides”, particularly with batters often moving around the crease in limited-overs formats.

“If a batter jumps across at the last minute, it doesn’t really work out for me,” Pollock told PTI on the sidelines of the SA20. “I think a bowler, at the start of his run-up, needs to know where he can bowl it.

“The current rule tends to suggest that if the batter moves and it’s that point of delivery where the batter is, and that’s according to where the wide will be called, I want a little bit of a change. I want them to know exactly when they’re running up why or how – how can a bowler be expected to change his game plan at the last second when he’s bowling? He needs to have a clear idea where he can go.

“So it’s in the pipeline, we’re all discussing. We need to give a little bit back to the bowlers.”

As things stand, though, the ICC’s playing conditions specify that a ball should be called a wide if it “passes wide of where the striker is standing and which also would have passed wide of the striker standing in a normal batting position”, and also, it is not a wide “if the striker, by moving, either causes the ball to pass wide of him, or brings the ball sufficiently within reach to be able to hit it by means of a normal cricket stroke”.

That aside, at the IPL and the WPL in India since 2023, players – bowlers and batters – have been empowered to review wide calls by umpires using DRS.

Simon Taufel, though, has not been in favour of it.

“I’m really conscious around trying to turn the art of officiating into a science and seek perfection, whatever that looks like, with decision making,” Taufel had told ESPNcricinfo. “So with wides for example, and here we’re going to, potentially according to you, or according to the player or the debate, take a wide call and throw that back to the third umpire for them to judge on something that might be marginal and is still a judgement call.”

Pollock said South Africa should look to leverage their players’ experience in subcontinent conditions during the upcoming Champions Trophy, which will be played in Pakistan (with the exception of matches featuring India, which will be played in Dubai).

“You’ve got basically the similar players that were at that [2023 ODI] World Cup, where we got to the semi-final and lost to Australia,” he said. “We’ve got a lot of IPL stars who play for South Africa. In those situations, everything looks good. The amount of IPL players, people like Heinrich Klaasen, David Miller, even Quinton de Kock, all those guys who spend so much time over there, getting an understanding for conditions, that can only help South Africa.

“They have got the ICC Test Championship final now as well, so it’s been some good stuff and, hopefully, some younger individuals come up. We’ve seen it starting to develop in the Test arena.”

The SA20,  South Africa’s pre-eminent franchise-based T20 competition, is now in its third season, and Pollock said it had “gone from strength to strength” in its short existence.

“Some of the activities at the ground as well, the Catch 2 Million competition this year has been added,” he said. “I know the young kids are taught ‘you’ve got to get to the ground’, because we need some money these days with the economy the way it is. But it’s definitely gone from strength to strength.

“South African cricket needed this injection – there’s no doubt about it. They needed something to create a bit of unbelievable interest in the game.”

[Cricinfo]