The white ball only swings for 2 overs: Deepak Chahar

Mumbai, June 10 (IANS) The ICC on Tuesday approved the interim changes suggested by the Cricket Committee in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic and that will see player having to do without using saliva to shine the ball. In fact, repeated failure to abide by the restriction will also have to deal with a 5-run penalty. But India pacer Deepak Chahar feels that shining the ball wont be an issue in limited-overs cricket.

Speaking on Star Sports show Cricket Connected, Chahar expressed his views and said, “I don’t think it will impact us so much because the white ball only swings for 2 overs. If we talk about the T20 format, the wicket is good for only 2-3 overs and the ball swings for 3 overs, so it reduces the need to shine the ball. The red ball requires a lot of shining!”

Commenting on working on his body and game during this unforeseen break, Chahar had told IANS: “When the lockdown started I had become fit (from stress fracture) and was looking to make a return. But now that when we were told that we needed to stay indoors to fight the pandemic, I thought it was an opportunity to work further on my strength. I trained my heart out. In fact, the 2.5 years before I got injured, I wasn’t getting the time to work on myself as I was playing non-stop. If you make a count, I would have hardly come home for 25 days and that too for periods of 2-3 days at max. My strength in the lower body had decreased and since I was playing non-stop, I couldn’t work on it. The body needed a 1-1.5 months away from the game.

“Slowly the action was also starting to suffer because when you keep bowling different variations like the knuckle ball and the slower bouncers and all, the action does change a bit. So this break helped me work on my action as well as my lower body strength. As a pacer you want the lower body strength to be on top.”

–IANS

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