Former Australian cricket captain Greg Chappell shared these radical ideas in his ESPNcricinfo column. He wrote it after watching a brilliant young batting star named Vaibhav Sooryavanshi. Chappell fears that T20 cricket is becoming too one-sided. He wants to protect the "soul of the contest".
Currently, teams have 10 wickets for 20 overs, which Chappell says lets them play with "complete impunity". They treat wickets as disposable resources and slog fearlessly from the first ball. The game's best bowlers are strictly limited to 4 overs (24 balls). Meanwhile, the best batters face no limits and have a safety net of 9 other teammates. By stopping the innings at 6 wickets, a batting collapse becomes a massive threat.
Teams would be forced to mix aggressive hitting with tactical restraint. It would revive the "anchor role", rewarding smart shot selection, clever ball placement, and hard running instead of just constant boundary hitting. Modern T20 pitches are often rolled flat and completely bare to encourage high scoring, leaving bowlers with no help.
"The number of wickets a batting team is permitted to lose in a T20 innings should be reduced to six. The best bowlers can only bowl four overs in this format, so the best batters should also be curtailed," Chappell wrote in his article.
Leaving 3mm of live grass gives fast bowlers early seam movement, variation, and true bounce. This forces opening batters to actually respect the new ball instead of attacking blindly. Chappell took this further for spin bowlers. He suggested putting 3mm of grass on only one half of the pitch, while leaving the other half dry and dusty. This creates a dynamic puzzle. Captains and batters would have to completely change their tactics depending on which end of the pitch they are facing.
Greg Chappell suggests Stumps only LBW for T20 games
The current LBW law states a batter cannot be out if the ball pitches outside the leg stump. Chappell wants to completely remove this condition. If it's on track to hit the stumps, it's out. Modern batters constantly shift their feet, switch their stances, and play reverse sweeps. Chappell says the current rule encourages negative "pad play", where batters just kick away balls turning out of the rough.
This change rewards bowlers who attack the stumps. It stops them from bowling boring, negative wide deliveries just to avoid being hit. As a bonus, it simplifies umpiring and cuts down on time-wasting, frivolous DRS reviews. Ultimately, Chappell believes these changes would turn T20 games back into a tense, thrilling chess match where a score of 160 is exciting to watch.
Chappell warns that T20 cricket is turning into a predictable power-hitting show rather than a true sport. When a score of 260 is chased down easily on flat pitches with short boundaries, the game loses its tension. Chappell believes that without risk, there is no real reward. If fans know that every single game will just be a rain of sixes, the excitement will eventually fade away.
Chappell's conclusion is simple: T20 cricket does not need bigger bats or flatter pitches; it needs balance. A truly great cricket match isn't one where 500 runs are scored carelessly. A great match is a low-scoring, tense thriller where every run is hard-earned, every wicket is celebrated, and every ball keeps fans on the edge of their seats. His rules aim to save the very soul of the sport.
