‘I’d love to see in T20 cricket, one bowler bowl a fifth over’: Simon Taufel’s suggestion to balance contest between bat and ball

Simon Taufel said that in T20 cricket, one bowler should be allowed to bowl 5 overs instead of 4 in order to provide a balanced contest between the bat and the ball in the shortest format. (File)

Former umpire Simon Taufel said that in T20 cricket, one bowler should be allowed to bowl 5 overs instead of 4 in order to provide a balanced contest between the bat and the ball in the shortest format. “I’ve made a couple of suggestions to a couple of different leagues, which are yet to be given the time of day. But I’d love to see – I’d love to see again – bat and ball be more equalised in limited-overs cricket,” the 54-year-old Taufel said to cricbuzz.

“I’d love to see in T20 cricket, one bowler bowl a fifth over. If a batter can be out there for the whole innings and score 100 from ball number one, we’re limiting all the bowlers to four overs. Can we actually maybe give one bowler one extra over, to try to even up a dominant batter versus a dominant bowler? You know, so those sorts of things. I’d just like to see how we can rebalance the scales a bit,” he added.

The Australian umpire also said that he wasn’t particularly a fan of the Impact Player rule in the IPL or the Super Sub rule in the ILT20.

“Not all changes are good. Sometimes things aren’t broken. And we go changing things just for the sake of a marketing gimmick, which, we’ve got to be careful in that space,” he said. “Well, look, IPL has the Impact Player. ILT20 has (a) Super Sub. My core cricket tells me that I’d love to see 11 (players taking) on 11. I’d love to see all-rounders, more all-rounders in the game.”

“I’d love to see the strategy of 11 on 11, not changed or impacted because of an impact player who might only bat for two balls and doesn’t field. Where is the value in that? I do like those traditional aspects of the game…” “The timeouts – you know, they certainly break the momentum, and they do sort of cause that pregnant pause in the game. Maybe that deserves a bit of a rethink…,” he added.