Alan Guppy, Surrey Re: Ian Bagshaw ' s Letter Entitled‘ Scoring Runs’ in Issue 26
I think that Mr. Bagshaw has missed a point and that is that leg byes can only be allowed if the striker is making a genuine attempt to play at the ball with the bat( or trying to avoid injury by moving away from the ball, but that is another issue), therefore the striker must have at least tried to have a‘ positive input with the bat’. It is therefore wrong of Mr. Bagshaw to insinuate that the striker is not trying to do so and it would be wrong to deny the striker the opportunity to make runs.
However, if we are to agree with Mr. Bagshaw ' s logic, this should apply to‘ byes’. At the moment, if the bowler has beaten the bat by good bowling( ie delivers a ball that is not far enough away from the striker to be considered a‘ wide’ ball but is‘ too good’ for the striker to attempt to hit), the striker can make runs even if he / she does not make any attempt to play at the ball with the bat. Surely it is unfair on the fielding team to allow byes if the striker has not made any such attempt?
This was fully answered by Mark Williams at the time. I think Mr Bagshaw’ s point was that leg byes should be removed as a way of scoring runs and Mark’ s answer explained why this was not being implemented by MCC. Law 26.2 is quite clear and leg byes can only be awarded if the striker has either:
( i) attempted to play the ball with his bat( ii) tried to avoid being hit by the ball.
It is for the umpire to decide whether either of these conditions has been met.
Brian Nathan, Gloucestershire
As Malcolm Howard says in his letter, player behaviour has deteriorated significantly in the last five years. I too have been an umpire in Surrey during that period, but standing elsewhere in the country recently I found the dissension to be even worse.
There are many examples of dissension, but in my experience the worst are batsmen’ s response to being given out LBW unless they have gone back full frontal on to their stumps and totally missed the ball. Invariably, they seem to believe that if they have taken a good stride forward down the wicket they cannot be out even to a straight ball bowled wicket to wicket.
This leads me to speculate as to whether there are a fair number of umpires who avoid the unpleasantness generated by giving a batsman out when he plays forward and automatically give him not out. Furthermore, bowlers tend to avoid appealing when a batsman plays forward and again I speculate whether they have become accustomed to a negative response from the umpire when they do appeal in these circumstances.
Of course, the primary duty of a captain is to engender team spirit and support his bowlers and all other team members, but in my view all that has gone too far. I am not sure that I shall continue umpiring after the end of this season. I am fed up with captains who ignore the importance of the spirit of cricket and take no steps to defend umpires against unpleasantness by members of their team.
So in my view, it is important that severe sanctions are imposed upon captains who fail in this duty.
It is not my experience that bowlers‘ tend to avoid appealing’ in the circumstances outlined by Brian. We do, however, agree that sanctions should be imposed upon captains who fail to uphold the Spirit of Cricket. That is the purpose of the on-field disciplinary procedures proposed by MCC.
I hope Brian is not lost to umpiring and that he will continue to use his knowledge and experience to benefit other umpires.
Andy Hooton, Leicestershire
The subject of player indiscipline / Spirit of Cricket receives a lot of column space in our magazine, and is often the main topic of conversation in my post-match discussion with my standing colleague on any given Saturday / Sunday / whenever. In addition, it is a subject that features on many an agenda for my Association’ s monthly meetings. I am associated to Staffordshire and stand in The Birmingham and District Premier Cricket League( BDPCL).
Today, it gives me great pleasure to share with you the following:
I was recently appointed to stand( and duly stood on Wednesday 17 August 2016) in the Area / Regional Final of the( Royal London) ECB Under-15 County Cup. The game was at Welbeck CC in Notts and featured Notts versus Warwickshire. I stood with Mohammed Waseem from Derby. To cut a long story short, we both had a brilliant day! Both sets of players( and their coaches / managers) were an absolute credit to the game. We made this known at the end of the game.
An excellent game of incident-free cricket; the sun shone throughout, brilliant venue, and, for the record, Notts won by five wickets with some four overs to spare.
# itswhywedoit
Excellent; a good day. We are pleased it went well and you enjoyed it.
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