Legendary Australian cricketer Ricky Ponting believes the hefty bans imposed Steve Smith, David Warner and Cameron Bancroft for their involvement in March’s ball-tampering scandal in South Africa have been a beneficial “shock” to world cricket. The issue was discussed during a two-day meeting at Lord’s concluded Tuesday of the Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) World Cricket Committee — of which Australia great Ponting is a member.
The committee, an advisory group whose chairman is former England skipper Mike Gatting, has no power to implement decisions but makes suggestions to the International Cricket Council.
During a press conference at Lord’s, Ponting said, “As a group, we were talking about the stance Cricket Australia took and how harsh that stance might have seemed to ban players for 12 months and nine months respectively. It’s probably got the desired outcome, a kind of a shock to world cricket.”
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He further added, “We have seen ball-tampering incidents happen probably more consistently over the last five or six years and to my mind, it’s because little things have crept in that were allowed to get to a certain point and the tipping point was a pre-meditated act that the Australian players took part in South Africa.”
MCC World Cricket committee met at Lord’s this week to discuss:
Cricket's culture ✅
Pace of play ✅
Protection of bowlers ✅
New formats ✅
Women's cricket ✅
Zimbabwe cricket ✅📝 ➡️ https://t.co/KkhmSiYQnL pic.twitter.com/LCCSOJLjUM
— Lord's Cricket Ground (@HomeOfCricket) August 7, 2018
Ponting suggested pitches need to be fair to both batsmen and bowlers as it was at Edgbaston last week and that leads to a “fantastic Test match” where England beat India by 31 runs, he reckons that it would abolish potential problems.
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Former Australian captain explained, “I think the reason reverse-swing has become such a big issue in the past 10 years is that the wickets have got flatter and flatter and there’s nothing in it for the bowlers and they have been trying to find a way to keep themselves in the contest. So let’s look at having a fair playing surface for everybody and it might start looking after itself.”
Meanwhile, Ponting said the MCC committee had looked at the idea of introducing in-game run-penalties in a bid to speed up over-rates. In recent times, most of the teams are failing to bowl the regulation 90 overs in a Test-match day and Ponting said the current system of mainly fining players had failed to abolish the problem.
