Cricket: Watched by umpires and support staff
By V Ramnarayan
Two thought-provoking ideas have recently
emerged on the way forward for cricket. The first is the proposal to stage
international contests before empty stadiums in order to prevent health risks
to players and spectators. The second is the revolutionary suggestion that the
lbw law be modified to allow dismissals off deliveries going on to hit the
stumps no matter where they are pitched.
The first of these, a result of the Covid 19
pandemic, presents an opportunity to focus on domestic cricket and showcase the
best of our talent. Let me explain. Cricketers below the international level
are already used to playing in the absence of spectators. You only have to walk
into any Ranji Trophy or Duleep Trophy match to realise this fact. List A and
T20 matches at the domestic level do not fare much better. The lockdown scenario therefore offers a
superb window of exposure to non-international cricket. Take a break from the international scene, as
the late Bobby Talyarkhan often strongly urged, make it mandatory for all of BCCI's
centrally contracted players to participate, and conduct, say Duleep Trophy
matches (in the old zonal format, to foster greater spectator loyalties) to
start with, exclusively for TV audiences, and glamourise these contests.
Advertisers should see value in the option, as, starved of other cricket action,
Indian and Indian-origin audiences are more than likely to support these games.
The other proposal, coming from the dynamic
cricket thinker Ian Chappell, has the merit of tilting the balance of power in
favour of bowlers. I submit, however,
that in the form Chappelli recommends, it leans too far away from the 'batsman's
game' tag cricket suffers from. How many batsmen in the world have the
technique not to be rapped on the pads while attempting to play? The example
Chappell cites, of the way Sachin Tendulkar famously demolished Shane Warne
bowling round the wicket into the rough, is an exceptional one, not something
on which an amendment of the lbw law can be based. While I welcome any move to
empower bowlers, I propose that a batsman can only be adjudicated as leg before
under the new rules off balls pitched outside the stumps (off stump or leg) if
offering no stroke. I also suggest not more than one close-in fielder behind
the crease on the legside, as I fear a return to leg theory otherwise.
One outcome I hope for from the proposed lbw
rule is a reduction in short pitched bowling by pacemen, thanks to the
increased opportunities likely for lbw decisions. "Oh no, not another Phil
Hughes!" goes my palpitating heart everytime I see a batsman felled and
collapsing on the pitch. Why would you need to pepper an obdurate tailender
with bouncers, for instance, if you can dismiss him without resorting to such
tactics?
Another contentious issue is whether to spit
and polish or not. Some measure of legalization of extraneous material for ball
maintenance seems inevitable.
In conclusion, I feel domestic cricket, played
in spectator-free stadia, can be a good platform to try out the amended lbw law
on an experimental basis.
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