New Delhi, July 25 (Inditop.com) Former South African fast bowler Allan Donald said the International Cricket Council (ICC) should legalise ball tampering to protect the “dying breed” of fast bowlers.

Donald said bowlers must be allowed to “prepare” the ball — ball-tampering, in other words — to redress the balance between bat and ball to protect the fast bowlers from increasingly lifeless pitches.

“The ICC would shoot me for saying it but, with the wickets that we play on and the dying breed fast bowlers are becoming on these flatter wickets, I would say we do need some sort of defence mechanism, something to fall back on to say ‘Right, we can do this. We can now prepare this ball to go’,” Donald was quoted sa saying in Cricinfo.

Donald, currently the Warwickshire coach, however, knows that his plea is likely to fall on deaf ears.

“That (legalising ball-tampering) quite simply would never happen,” he said.

Donald agreed that bowlers had altered the condition of the ball in various ways to get prodigious reverse swing.

“There is no doubt guys tampered with the ball,” he said of the fast bowlers of his time.

He recalled one incident in the mid-1990s when he saw a former fast bowler pick a little chunk of leather live on the television during a Test match against England.

“The guy was just chipping away with his nails and I couldn’t believe how he could get away with it,” Donald said. “The commentator, a famous former player, said “Steady on”, but he (bowler) denied it later. Let’s not kid ourselves, there is no question it still goes on.”

Donald agreed the best method, if the ICC relented, was to rip the ball without artificial help.

“I wouldn’t bite it,” he said with a chuckle.

“One way is if the ball gets scuffed on one side,and there is a tiny little chunk that is missing, you pick it up and just keep that side dry and keep working on it, while shining the other side very heavily without putting any moisture.”