Akram hails ICC interim changes
Image : Collected
|| CF Correspondent ||
Bangladesh Cricket Board (BCB) Cricket Operations Committee Chairman Akram Khan has hailed the International Cricket Council’s (ICC) interim recommendation changes, stating that these obvious changes will help minimize the mounting threat of the coronavirus pandemic and bring cricket back to the field little by little.
The ICC has brought a set of changes in their playing rules, most relevant changes are COVID-19 substitute for any team and ban on the use of Saliva to shine the ball.
“It’s no doubt that ICC has taken the right and timely measures to stop using saliva to shine the ball so that the coronavirus can’t spread among the players,” said Akram Khan, who is also an executive board director of the BCB.
“We all know that every cricketer uses salvia for the ball to shine and swing the ball. In these circumstances it will be very risky to use saliva to shine the ball,” Akram told a leading Bangla online newspaper.
“Coronavirus can spread through using salvia in the ball. If any cricketer is coronavirus positive and if any other bowler uses that salvia to shine the ball, he might then get affected with coronavirus diseases. ICC has taken that decision with a lot of thoughts,” he added.
The former middle-order batsman of Bangladesh said that this replacement decision should have been implemented earlier by the government body of the game.
“ICC should have been more thoughtful about replacing a cricketer with others if the cricketer is found to have coronavirus positive. This law should have been implemented earlier that if any cricketer has infectious diseases, he can then be replaced,” Akram Khan expressed.
“In the five-day Test, anybody can suffer from fever. Nobody can play with having an infection. Then the team suffers for those players. It was needed to have alternative options for infected players,” he pointed out.
“Coronavirus has become a pandemic now and thus alternative cricket rules are implemented. I think it was needed for fever and infectious related players to be replaced,” he concluded.
