LBW AND OTHER STORIES

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.