The ongoing Indian Premier League (IPL) has increased the debate about maintaining a balance between bat and ball. IPL 2026 has so far produced several high-scoring matches as well as some low-scoring games.
In this season, there are multiple games with more than 240 runs in an innings, while the lowest run in an innings recorded in IPL 2026 is 75. Last night, when the Royal Challengers Bengaluru were up against the Mumbai Indians, the target score was 167, which presented an evenly balanced contest between bat and ball.
Should BCCI protect the bowlers?
Despite some massive high-scoring matches, as there are some games with average totals, the question remains, ‘Should BCCI introduce a special rule to protect the bowler?’
Cricket legend Sunil Gavaskar has made some interesting points in his latest column. Gavaskar points out that as a batter, in a 20-overs match, is laced with multiple beneficial rules, then bowlers also deserve to get support by some special rule.
The batting legend proposed to allow a bowler, who is bowling well in a match, an extra over. For example, Bhuvneshwar Kumar took 4 wickets in 4 overs. According to Sunil Gavaskar’s proposal, the bowler should be allowed to deliver another extra over in the spell.
Sunil Gavaskar proposes a new rule for the bowlers in IPL
“The restriction of only four overs to a bowler could be looked at again. If a batter can bat the entire 20 overs, why can’t a bowler who gets, say, three wickets in his four overs be allowed to bowl another over as a reward for getting those wickets?”
“This way, teams will also try getting wickets instead of trying only to save runs being scored. After all, the best dot ball is the wicket-taking dot ball, isn’t it? Yes, you could conceivably have three bowlers getting three wickets and an extra over each,” Sunil Gavaskar wrote in his column for Mid-Day.
“That would even up the playing field a fair bit in a format where just about everything is stacked against the bowlers. Look at the small boundaries, the strict interpretation of the wide for a bouncer going marginally over the batter’s head, and so on.”
“So, giving the bowlers and the fielding captain an incentive to take wickets and not just be defensive from the first ball would be something worth trying out,” he added.
Sunil Gavaskar is worried about the venues as well
The former India captain is worried about the tendency to host matches on the batting-friendly tracks. He talked about the domestic tournament, where various pitches are used across the nation, and the grounds with the most batting-friendly nature could be selected for hosting IPL games.
“As with every new playing condition, it can be trialled in the many city leagues that are coming up. Then, in the Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy, I found that it does level a format which is more batting friendly than it could be used in the next year’s IPL or maybe in the next cycle of IPL starting from 2028,” Sunil Gavaskar says.
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