The recently-retired Test veteran seamer Stuart Broad has proposed a rule change, or rule addition in Test cricket that, similarly to white-ball cricket, bowlers should be penalized with a free-hit to the batsman for bowling no-balls in Test cricket.
Stuart Broad, who retired from Test cricket with 604 scalps at the end of the Ashes 2023 series, suggested that giving free-hit to the batters in case of a no-ball from the bowler would further increase the entertainment level for the fans, especially those sitting in the crowd. With the fielders generally positioned near the batters in Test cricket, a free-hit would provide the batsman with more leeway and a better chance to get a boundary.
“Punish the bowlers”: Stuart Broad on free-hit for no-ball in Test cricket
Speaking on the lines of the ongoing The Hundred competition for Sky Sports, Stuart Broad was asked about one rule change that he would like to see in cricket.
Broad said: “In Test cricket I would make a no ball a free hit too, because you might have your three slips and gully in and cover in and all that, but if you bowl a front foot no ball – it’s easy to say now [that] I’m done, isn’t it? Punish the bowlers – but I would make every no ball a free hit because how good would it be to be sat in the crowd with all the fielders around the bat and then the batter could just whack one out of the ground?”
Stuart Broad’s long-time bowling partner and the leading Test wicket-taking pacer in the world, James Anderson, comically said that he’d remove some rules in the game because there are just too many of them.
“I’d get rid of a few rules and Laws because there are too many – it confuses me – but I can’t think of anything off the top of my head,” James Anderson said.
