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Sunil Gavaskar wants bigger boundaries at Indian cricket venues and in IPL to help Team India prepare for 2027 ODI World Cup originally appeared on Cricket News. Add Cricket News as a Preferred Source by clicking here.
KEY TAKEAWAYS:
- Sunil Gavaskar wants boundary sizes increased at Indian venues before the 2027 ODI World Cup.
- He argues small ropes flatter batters whose mishits clear the fence at home.
- Gavaskar says average fielders must be dropped after India's poor efforts against England.
Sunil Gavaskar wants bigger boundaries at IPL venues to help India prepare for 2027 World Cup
Sunil Gavaskar has never been one to reach for panic, and his latest assessment of Indian cricket carries that measured tone even as the results pile up against the side. Writing in his column for Sportstar, the batting great argued that recent setbacks call for honest reflection rather than any drastic overhaul of the group.
The former captain framed his diagnosis around a familiar criticism, that India's batters plunder runs on flat home pitches only to struggle abroad. Yet Gavaskar's real target was not the surfaces themselves but the boundary dimensions, which he believes are doing lasting damage to how the country's batters judge a big shot.
His prescription is direct and practical. Gavaskar wants grounds across India to push their ropes back before the domestic season begins, using space he says already exists behind the advertising boards, so that batters learn to clear genuine distances ahead of the World Cup next year.
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Why Gavaskar wants the ropes pushed back
The logic, as he lays it out, is about exposure to real conditions. Gavaskar wrote in Sportstar, "It's the ridiculously small boundaries that flatter the batter, whose mishits can clear the ropes, while in countries with bigger and longer boundaries these same hits are caught inside the boundary line."
He believes the change would benefit India's spinners as much as the batters. Larger boundaries, in his view, would encourage slow bowlers to flight the ball rather than fire it in flat, and he pointed to England's spinners as a model. Gavaskar noted that Adil Rashid and Will Jacks operated markedly slower than their Indian counterparts and were far more effective for it.
The column reserved its firmest words for India's fielding, an area Gavaskar viewed as non-negotiable. He wrote in Sportstar that if a player is an average fielder, "he has to be shown the door", dismissing the notion that a captain should have to conceal three or four liabilities in the field during a match.
On batting, he urged players to check their egos and read situations more carefully. Gavaskar argued that the ODI format allows a brief settling period before the power game begins and that smart cricket means identifying which bowlers to respect and which to attack across an innings.
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A veteran voice calling for a much-needed change in Indian cricket
There is a reassuring steadiness to Gavaskar's intervention that the current environment arguably needs. Rather than joining the clamor for wholesale change after England's reverses, he has isolated specific, fixable failings and, in doing so, offered a template for improvement rather than a demand for heads to roll.
Whether his boundary proposal gains traction is another matter entirely, given how deeply the small-ground, high-scoring template is now embedded in the Indian game's commercial appeal. His argument is sound in cricketing terms, yet it runs against a spectacle-driven tide that shows little sign of turning before 2027.
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