Sunny's ideas: Some good, some bad

<div class="section1"><div class="Normal"><span style="" font-weight:="" bold="">MUMBAI:</span> Sunil Gavaskar tickled some ideas by the International Cricket Council during his Colin Cowdrey Lecture at Lord’s on Tuesday.<br /><br />These included: relaxing fielding restrictions for five overs of an innings in One-dayers, during which two fielders may be placed outside the circle at any stage; getting rid of leg byes; doing away with runs resulting from the ball ricohetting off stumps after a direct hit and limiting run-ups of bowlers for one-third the total number of overs to encourage spinners and help over rate.<br /><br />"Changes in the fielding restriction rule will raise the game’s excitement," former India captain K Srikkanth said from Chennai."It has been discussed before. I was part of that meeting and had conceived the Floating Five Overs concept. Here, a captain uses his 15 field-restriction overs in three spells of five each. This can keep everyone on the field guessing, it will entail intelligence. Otherwise things can get predictable."<br /><br />Srikkanth, one of Gavaskar’s opening partners, did not agree with the other alterations. "The rules for leg byes and runs from direct throws should not be tampered with. But sledging is a serious matter and umpires should have greater power to penalise offenders," Srikkanth said.<br /><br />Dilip Vengsarkar supported Gavaskar’s suggestions as long as they were not meant for Tests. "There is scope for experimentation in One-day cricket, which is a gimmickry variation of the game in any case," Vengsarkar said. "I won’t like changes in the Test rules. I respect tradition too much for it."<br /><br />So does another ex-India captain, Ajit Wadekar. "There is a lot of negative bowling and doing away with leg byes may compound the situation," he said. "I’d like to add here that measures must be introduced to check fielders packing the off-side. This results in negative cricket. Where doing away with runs from direct throws is concerned, it would take away the covering fielder’s challenge. Now, he has to be alert and there is a charm to that."<br /><br />Anshuman Gaekwad welcomed Gavaskar’s ideas. "He wants batsmen to earn their runs," Gaekwad said from Baroda. "In the 70s, the ICC rule book was about 15-20 pages. I guess it’s around 200 now."</div> </div>