ICC should legalise ball tampering: Donald

Former South Africa paceman Allan Donald feels the International Cricket Council should legalise ball tampering to prevent the growing hegemony of batsmen in cricket.

Former South Africa paceman Allan Donald feels the International Cricket Council should legalise ball tampering to prevent the growing hegemony of batsmen in cricket.

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“The ICC would shoot me for saying it but, with the wickets that we play on and the dying breed fast bowlers are becoming on these flatter wickets, I would say we do need some sort of defence mechanism, something to fall back on to say ‘Right, we can do this. We can now prepare this ball to go’,” Donald told ‘Cricinfo’. However, the 42-year-old is aware his plea would have very little effect.

“That (legalising ball-tampering) quite simply would never happen,” he said. Ball tampering raised quite a storm during Donald’s time and the pacer conceded that bowlers did it to get reverse swing.