August 15, 2009
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Keep WADA out of cricket
From Alfred Moore, Ireland
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Shane Warne was suspended from playing cricket for a year after being found guilty of taking a banned substance
© Getty Images
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Our beautiful game is in grave danger. In the name of the global war on drugs, a zealous bureaucracy fitted to the very different world of athletics threatens to seize control of cricket. We will ultimately pay for it with the loss of great players for procedural improprieties. WADA, remember, had criticised Shane Warne's one-year suspension as "disappointing". If there is a drug problem in cricket, then WADA’s cure is worse than the disease. Since the BCCI until now has rejected the World Anti-Doping Agency’s advances, drugs have been on the mind of cricketers and fans worldwide, and sage commentators like Peter Roebuck and Mike Atherton have weighed in on the side of WADA. What’s the harm, they said, in submitting to international best practice on drug use in sport? Surely the innocent have nothing to fear? However, I think the innocent have everything to fear. We need to take a step back and ask ourselves, we lovers of cricket: What exactly is the problem? And is the solution going to cause more harm?
By all accounts, drug use is not a major problem in cricket. There are at least three main uses for drugs in cricket. The first is to recover more quickly from injuries. There are a lot of entirely legal techniques and chemical crutches to keep players fit for a punishing international schedule. While on the road to recovery, Andrew Flintoff’s veins were coursing with cortisone. Mohammad Asif, on the other hand, was banned for using non-permitted drugs to help him recover from injury. I’ll put my cards on the table here: I think players ought to be allowed to use drugs that help them recover from injury. In itself, using cortisone (or whatever) to play through pain doesn’t introduce an unfair advantage, except in as much as it’s unfair for Philip Hughes to have to face Flintoff around the wicket.
A second kind of drug use is more familiar outside the world of elite sport. I’m talking about recreational drugs, like alcohol, cocaine and marijuana. Ed Giddins, a middling English bowler, got in trouble for taking cocaine. He said someone must have spiked his drink with cocaine, though of course in some parts of the world it would be the alcohol that would have landed him in hot water. Phil Tufnell and Ian Botham actually admitted to smoking pot. In many countries this is against the law, but it couldn’t possibly be described as performance enhancing, unless by ‘performance’ we mean the ability to taste the colour in Pink Floyd. Recreational drugs have brought pleasure to some and destroyed the lives of others, but they aren’t a problem special to cricket.
‘Performance enhancement’ is the third, and, we would assume, most important, use of drugs. It might be confused with the first; masking pain can surely improve performance but it is usually associated with a different purpose, namely, to build up one’s body in order to run faster, jump higher and lift greater weight. In sports like swimming, cycling, running and other athletic events this is a massive problem because triumph is decided by a stopwatch or a yardstick and the difference between glory and failure can be a millimetre or one hundredth of a second. Twitchier muscles or more highly oxygenated blood confer a clear advantage for the users of certain drugs, who are rightly called cheats. Yet such drugs are utterly irrelevant to the enhancement of cricket performance. In none of the salient dimensions of the game of cricket - bowling, batting, catching - do medicines enhance performance. No amount of steroids would have made Steve Harmison hit the cut strip on that fateful Brisbane morning in November 2006. It’s not for want of pseudoephedrine that Alistair Cook plays across his front pad. And a pill has yet to be invented that can lend Graeme Smith the effortless beauty of Mahela Jayawardene’s cover drive.
So much for the disease. What about the cure? WADA developed stringent and zealous procedures in the context of athletics, and rightly so. But one size does not fit all. To apply rules designed for athletics and apply them to cricket is disproportionate and potentially destructive. The ‘whereabouts’ clause, to which the BCCI objected, means that violations of the procedure of testing become grounds for a ban. That is, by not giving your whereabouts correctly you will be treated as though you have taken banned substances.
A word of warning. If WADA had their way, Shane Warne would have been struck from the game. Think about that. Because an unapproved chemical was found in Warne’s bloodstream, one of the all time great players would have been kept from the stage for far longer. There was never any suggestion he gained an unfair competitive advantage. He just broke a rule. If you think about it, he broke a lot of rules, and that’s one reason he’ll always be my favourite. But it never was, and could never have been, the case that drugs made him great. If you imagine a 1920s international sports council populated entirely by pious American prohibitionists trying to ban Jack Hobbs for drinking a beer, you might get a sense of what is at stake. Cricket is our game, and it should be us, not athletics administrators, who make the rules. While the BCCI’s motives may be murky, if they can keep WADA out of cricket, they will be doing the game a great service.
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May 10, 2009
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Dissecting the LBW
From S Giridhar and VJ Raghunath
This piece like earlier ones began as an animated discussion between the two of us. This time about umpiring in general and LBW in particular. The essence of the LBW Law has remained the same over time: a) to be LBW the ball must hit the batsman in line with the stumps and is likely to hit the stumps beyond any reasonable doubt; b) if the ball pitches outside leg you cannot be leg before even if that delivery was likely to hit the stumps; c) one can be LBW even if the batsman is struck outside the off stump provided the batsman is not offering a stroke in the opinion of the umpire (this rule was introduced around 1970).
The two significant changes that have occurred in the last twenty years are: a) the introduction of neutral umpires; b) use of technology for line decisions and referrals for clean catches.
So why are we seeing an increase in the percentage of LBW in recent years? Are the rules being interpreted differently? Are the umpires not applying benefit of doubt in the same manner as before? Since neutral umpires were introduced around 1990, we examined the LBW dismissals for the period 1930 to 1989 and for the period since 1990. The summary is given below:
% LBW Dismissals
| Host Country |
Between 1930-1989 |
Since 1990 |
| Australia |
11.3 |
14.8 |
| England |
13.7 |
16.6 |
| India |
13.9 |
18.4 |
| New Zealand |
10.6 |
16.4 |
| Pakistan |
16.3 |
21.1 |
| South Africa |
13.1 |
13.5 |
| Sri Lanka |
15 |
17.4 |
| West Indies |
13 |
18 |
| Zimbabwe |
|
15.8 |
| All |
13 |
16.7 |
In the period since 1990, LBW dismissals as a percentage of total dismissals have risen to 16.7% from 13% in the period 1930 to 1989. That is a 30% increase in the incidence of LBW dismissals in the last 20 years as compared to earlier years. When we looked for Test matches which had the maximum LBW dismissals, our search showed almost all the top entries are from post 1980 tests.
Next we stacked up 20 batsmen each from the pre and post-1989 period based on the percentage of their LBW dismissals. We found that 17 of the 20 pre-1989 era batsmen have the least percentage of LBW decisions. Don Bradman, Len Hutton and Sunil Gavaskar have been dismissed less than 10% of the time LBW while Garry Sobers, Colin Cowdrey, Gavaskar, Gundappa Viswanath and Zaheer Abbas have been dismissed less than 11.5 % of the time LBW. The only oldies in our sample with a higher percentage were Ken Barrington (20.7%), Javed Miandad (19.6%) and Vijay Manjrekar (15.9%). In contrast, the post-1990 era batsmen have the higher percentage LBW dismissals. Graeme Smith, Younis khan, Nasser Hussain, Shivnarine Chanderpaul and Sachin Tendulkar have been dismissed LBW in excess of 20% of their innings; Ricky Ponting, Inzimam-ul-Haq, Chris Gayle and Alec Stewart have been dismissed LBW in over 18% of their innings and Brian Lara, Jacques Kallis, Mark Waugh, Justin Langer, Michael Atherton and Sanath Jayasuriya have been out LBW in over 16 % of their innings. Among the post-1990 players, Mahela Jayewardene is the sole exception with a lower LBW percentage (10.5%)
Back then, batsmen enjoyed a consistent and clear benefit of doubt on LBW with umpires. It was an unwritten rule for umpires that when a batsman played well forward, he would not be given out LBW. You wouldn’t want to be the one who gave a Sobers, Richards, Gavaskar or Miandad out wrongly and changed the course of the match. The batsmen of the sixties and seventies with great reputations like Cowdrey for instance, used this advantage well both in shot selection and risk taking. The old English adage-“when in doubt stretch forward” was employed by all great batsmen with little fear or uncertainty. Good batsmen made runs. When they got a start, they made big scores - the crowds came to watch their favourites hit centuries.
The downside was that batsmen could get away with a lot of pad play. In the fifties and sixties cricket was threatened by masters of pad play. The barracker at Sydney became immortal when he angrily asked an English batsman to tie his bat to his legs because he would score more runs that way! In 1967, at Chennai, when Charlie Griffith joined Sobers (with only Hall and Gibbs to follow), there were still 90 minutes left on the last day for India to seek victory. Sobers asked Griffith to stretch forward and take everything on his front pad - with complete confidence that he would not be given out. It is probably to neutralize such pernicious pad play that the rule change to penalize batsmen padding up outside off stump was introduced around 1970.
It is fascinating to note that for the period 1930-89, the higher percentage of LBW against visiting teams as compared to home team is sharply evident in the case of the sub-continent. In contrast there is hardly any difference in percentage of LBW decisions for the home team and opposition teams in England, Australia, South Africa and West Indies. In fact in New Zealand the percentage of home team LBW is greater than the guests.
LBW in 1930-1989
| Country |
Host LBW% |
Opposition LBW % |
| Australia |
11.1 |
11.5 |
| England |
13.9 |
13.5 |
| India |
10.9 |
17.1 |
| New Zealand |
12.2 |
9.6 |
| Pakistan |
11.7 |
19.6 |
| South Africa |
12.9 |
13.1 |
| Sri Lanka |
7.7 |
23.9 |
| West Indies |
12.9 |
13.1 |
| All |
12.3 |
13.8 |
The picture since 1990, i.e. the neutral umpire era is equally interesting. The difference in LBW for Home team and opposition team has been greatly reduced in the sub continent. On the other hand the percentage of opposition LBW has risen above home team LBW in the case of Australia. See table below.
LBW Since 1990
| Country |
Host LBW% |
Opposition LBW% |
| Australia |
11.9 |
16 |
| England |
16.5 |
16.1 |
| India |
16.9 |
22.2 |
| New Zealand |
15.7 |
15.9 |
| Pakistan |
18.1 |
26.1 |
| South Africa |
15.6 |
15 |
| Sri Lanka |
14.5 |
19.5 |
| West Indies |
21.3 |
15.5 |
| Zimbabwe |
15.8 |
13.9 |
| All |
16 |
17.3 |
In essence, neutral umpires meant two things: a) only the best umpires in the world would form an elite panel; b) it would serve to take away the long nursed grudge that home umpires tilted the game in favour of the home team.
While the overall increase in LBW since 1990 is evident, the numbers remain relatively lower in Australia and South Africa. One very strong and logical reason for this is that the wickets are bouncier and so often the ball would go over the stumps. The one caveat about neutral umpires is that sometimes they are not able to judge the bounce as well as a local umpire would do knowing the conditions better.
The current crop of top batsmen - Tendulkar, Ponting, Kallis, Younis, Chanderpaul or Pietersen –unlike batsmen of the earlier era - are being given out LBW more often. The batsman plays half forward defensively or is trying to work the ball to leg, is rapped on the front pad, apparently in line with the leg stump (ball still has to travel 7 to 8 feet to the stumps). You are surprised to see the umpire raising the finger and stupefied to see Hawk-eye showing the ball kissing the legstump. The TV commentator who has played enough cricket to know that Hawk Eye is wrongly named then says with minimum conviction, “Hawk Eye says that would hit leg stump”. The Hawk Eye is positioned high up and has an inherent inability to extrapolate and predict the destination of the ball after pitching. Those who watched cricket before the seventies will remember that umpires in those days crouched low so that their eyes were almost at stump level.
Finally it all boils down to good umpiring – which means consistency in decision making. It does not matter that Dickie Bird or Venkataraghavan would make instant judgments or that others needed to play it over and over in their minds. From Chester to Buller in the early days to Dickie Bird, David Shepherd, S Venkatraghavan and Simon Taufel in recent times, the best umpires understood the essence of umpiring and displayed consistency and predictability in their rulings. In that split second of time an umpire has to look at the bowler’s landing foot, instantly look up and judge length, line, height, deviation, catch the sound of an inside edge and decide LBW or not LBW. Umpires used their judgment and applied the unwritten code of benefit of doubt consistently. The best umpires got most of their decisions right. Today, the pressure on modern day umpires is becoming unbearable with every decision being cruelly dissected by Slo-Mo, Hawk-Eye, Snickometer and Hot Spot.
Having written all this we took the opportunity to chat informally with Venkat about umpiring. We could not have gone to a person with better credentials – the only umpire in the world to have played over 50 Tests and also captained his country in Tests and the World Cup; on the ICC Elite panel of umpires, winner of the CEAT Award and adjudged one of the best umpires and one who earned the highest respect from all, both during his days as a player and later as an umpire. The essence of what Venkat said about umpiring and LBW decisions was: The good umpire, besides integrity needs concentration and competence to achieve consistency. The powers of concentration cannot be over emphasized, when one remembers that the umpires are there for 90 overs a day for all five days without a break. The din and noise from the crowd can make it very difficult. This concentration and consistency is what a good umpire demonstrates in the LBW. He will make the same decision whether the batsman is a No.1 or 2 or whether he is 9, 10 or jack. Though himself a bowler, Venkat said that one must bear in mind that when a batsman plays forward, even to a spinner, the ball is quite likely to bounce higher than stump height, unless it hits him below the shin. As an engineer, he says, he could appreciate the uncertainty of line and height over 8 to 10 feet of travel. This analysis and judgment of whether the ball would hit the stumps is the crux of competence in judging LBW.
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September 2, 2008
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Change format of ODIs
From Veer Dhandapani, USA
Watching the recent ODI series between India and SL, the importance of the toss on the outcome of the matches was significant. Especially in grounds like Dambulla, Premadasa, Cape Town, Durban etc. The ongoing clamor for revamping the ODI format to make it more exciting throws up an opportunity to balance the input of the toss into the results equation.
What about dividing the ODI innings into two parts: Each team going for a certain number of overs and then in the 2nd half the team that lost the toss gets to choose what they want to do - bat or field first. There are several exciting possibilities here - the cutoff for the first half can be 25 or 35 overs - halfway point or the point where the ball is changed - the rules can be set up for one choice here. The value of winning the toss is diluted to a first mover advantage only - the last move can still be decided by the team losing the toss.
Or the team winning the toss can choose to give the choice of picking batting or bowling first up to the team losing the toss. Either way, it throws up a game within a game - what will happen at the toss itself gets to be exciting while diluting its potential impact on the result. Both teams get a somewhat level playing field, especially under lights when the playing conditions are different than during the day.
Another suggestion is to allow the captains to name their teams after the toss and decision at the toss - this would also even the field a bit as the losing team at the toss can atleast field the team for the circumstances. At worst, these ideas are worth a try - I think they are certainly better than some of the ones that have been tried - the substitute at the innings break being one that was summarily dumped after it got a go around.
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August 26, 2008
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LBWs should not be reviewed
From Vipul Gupta, India
The ICC deserves to be lauded for taking a step in the right direction with the Request Review system but still I feel that there is a lot of fine tuning that remains to be done.
The genesis for the Request Review system can be traced to the fractious India v Australia series in Australia at the end of 2007 when several umpiring errors went against only one side i.e. India. If it is observed closely than most of the howlers were concerned with thick edges that everyone except the umpire in question did not see or hear. Indians can justifiably feel aggrieved after the just concluded Indo v Lanka series that they were at the receiving end of some rough decisions. But this time the majority of the decisions concerned LBWs.
LBWs by their very nature are very subjective and differ from person to person. Both Sehwag and Dravid were adjudged out LBW at critical junctures in the series when many people would have felt that the decisions were very harsh. On the other hand the Lankan batsmen really benefited a lot most notably T. Samaraweera when in the 3rd Test in the first innings he was out plumb to a skidder from Kumble but the decision was overturned in the batsman's favour. In fact Sachin was caught on TV gesturing to his mates on the field from the pavilion that the batsman was out.
The benefit of doubt is always given to a batsman but in the recent series it was observed that the umpires preferred to err on the bowler's side and gave the batsman out and then wait for the third umpire to over rule him. Even a big stride forward was not safe anymore. If batsmen of the caliber of Dravid and Sachin are given out in such fashion than I do not think there would be many Test Matches that would last longer than 2-3 days. That is the reason why I advocate that the LBW decision should be kept out of the purview of the Request review system.
By all means in cases where there is sufficient room for doubt about an inside edge on to the pads than it can be referred to the man upstairs but on the whole I would prefer the on field umpire to take the call on whether the ball was pitched in line and whether or not it would have gone on to hit the stumps. Now it is clear that even the best of technology cannot guarantee 100 % error free decisions. And please do not forget that even incorrect umpiring decisions are very much a part of the charm of the game.
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August 14, 2008
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Better than Duckworth-Lewis
From Ram Srinivasan, United States of America
With cricket being played throughout the calendar year, weather interruptions are inevitable. In addition, matches are routinely disrupted because of crowd trouble. Since its introduction in 1997, the Duckworth-Lewis (DL) method has been successfully used in more than 200 one-day matches to deal with interruptions. The DL method has almost always set targets that align with our intuition and qualitative understanding of the game and this has been its greatest strength.
In an accompanying technical paper, published in the Journal of the Operations Research Society, Dr. Duckworth and Dr. Lewis provide an excellent mathematical development of their rain rule. They identify two resources that a batting team has at its disposal - (1) number of overs available, and (2) wickets in hand to play out these overs. At the heart of the method is a function that determines the number of runs that a batting team will score in a given number of overs given the number of wickets at its disposal. They determine the form of the function using data from completed matches. Once the form of the function is decided, using it to adjust targets is standard and different rain rules primarily differ in the form of the function.
Let us ponder for a moment. Are we really doing the best by simply noting down the number of wickets and overs left in quantifying the batting team's resources? We haven't really accounted for the quality of the wickets and the quality of the bowlers who are going to bowl the overs. Less runs are likely to be scored when great bowlers like Shane Warne and Glen McGrath bowl the overs than when good bowlers like Ian Blackwell and Liam Plunkett bowl them. In a similar vein, more runs are likely to be scored when we have a Ricky Ponting and Matt Hayden at the crease.
Thus, a sure way of improving the D/L method is to incorporate the current form of the batsmen and bowlers into determining the number of runs that will be scored. While the above argument seems reasonable, we seem to have walked into the realm of subjectivity and personal tastes. How do we determine whether Sachin Tendulkar is better than Owais Shah, and if that is the case, how many more runs is he likely to score? Thankfully, there is already a system in place to compare player and quantify their current form.
The official LG ICC player rankings use a sophisticated algorithm to capture the current form of players by assigning bowling and batting points between 0 and 1000. The points reflect not just the number of runs scored and wickets taken but also the circumstances, manner and the team against which they were secured. Sophisticated heuristics can now be developed to integrate the rating system with the DL method to determine the exact manner in which the bowling points and batting points are to be incorporated into the DL method.
For example, the actual number of overs and wickets available may be scaled depending on the scores of the batsmen and the bowler bowling the overs. The effective resources can then be used in the DL method. From an implementation perspective, the entire procedure can be worked out through software, thereby minimizing human intervention and any consequent errors. The only infrastructure that is required is a computer that can connect through the internet to the LGG ICC database to download the latest player points.
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August 12, 2008
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A facelift for 50 over cricket
From Dave Richardson, Australia
Where is the ICC up to with their deliberations on possible new formats for the tired 50 over game? I wonder whether the following is worth some thought.
As we all know the key is getting the fielding restrictions right with enough incentive for both bat and ball but most importantly the viewing public. Without tinkering too much and not to complicate or confuse I would advocate an incremental increase in fielders allowed outside the 30 yard zone on the following basis: Overs 1-5= 1 Fielder, Overs 6-15= 2 Fielders, Overs 16-30= 3 Fielders, Overs 31-45= 4 Fielders, Overs 45-50+ 5 Fielders.
The above formula would provide some increased incentive to score through the middle phase of the innings and is based on a simple 1-5 increase shared equitably across the overs with the balance of 2 five over spells at the commencement of the innings with the least fielders and the last five with the most outside the zone.
To add further excitement and edge I would also include the incentive of a captain being able to forfeit placing an extra fielder outside the zone for an increase of 1 run per over as long as the restriction remains, or alternatively minus 1 run per over if there is an increase by 1 fielder over the stipulated number per phase.
This probably needs more work but conceptually could add some further excitement for all involved, no doubt there could be some variations on this in particular increasing the number of runs either added or subtracted. This is very much off the top of my head but I thought might be worth some further debate.
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August 11, 2008
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Umpires relying on guesswork?
From Alan Rhys-Thompson, United Kingdom
I am interested in the way umpires seeme to apply different standards of "being certain" (the sole criterion for giving a batsman out as I understand it) as between lbws and 'bat-pad' claims. For the former, they appear to me to be if anything over-scrupulous (especially hard on spinners, as has been noted!), not that I have any problem with any last sliver of doubt going the batsman's way. But that's just the point.
It seems to me to be far harder to be "certain" when it comes to 'bat-pad' decisions, but they seem almost to be given on guesswork. Paul Collingwood's dismissal at Headingley was a classic case. How COULD the umpire be certain in that case, as the bat was a fair way from the ball? I bet he just THOUGHT it hit the bat! I have used the word "seems" a lot, because I don't want to appear dogmatic about this, and just wonder if other viewers share this opinion.
Of course, as England batsmen seem incapable of playing any spinner with a sliver of talent (and God help them when they meet up with this new star, Mendis!) so are frequently out prodding forward, leaving themselves open to the umpire's whim. Am I being unfair to the men in white?
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August 7, 2008
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Cricket is too complex
From Sameer, India
I feel rules of cricket needs to be simplified. But they seem to be going in other direction. LBW is a very complex decision. Who is going to decide whether more than half of the ball was pitched outside leg stump? Then whether bat was just hidden behind the pads or genuinely batsman was trying the shot but missed it. All this is subjective. If the ball is going to hit the stumps and if it has not hit the bat at all then you should be given out. Obviously umpire would be the judge. The same eight countries are playing cricket for some years now. Complexity of rules might be another reason for the disinterest of the viewers worldwide.
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August 2, 2008
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Referring to 'referrals'
From R. Thirucumaran, Sri Lanka
I know, it may be too early to come to conclusions, but, from what I've seen of it, there are some very inherent flaws in the referral system.
I'm sure most of you are aware of the fact that the 3rd umpire, as far as hawk - eye is concerned', only has access to the pictures which show the path of the ball till the moment of impact with the bat. Frankly, I'm at a loss to understand why this is so. The ICC honchos say that hawk-eye doesn't take into consideration the effects of wind and swing on the path of the ball, but I feel that the umpire would have enough brains to look at the ball and see whether it would've hit the stumps.
Secondly, a quite funny regulation that I came to know of only during the course of the test match stated that the 3rd umpire conveys what he has found from TV replays and all that to the field umpire, who then makes the decision. How stupid is that! Obviously, the on - field umpire has no access to TVs, so let the 3rd umpire make the decision instead of wasting time conveying it to the on - field, dude!
Thirdly, I can't understand why the 3rd ump isn't allowed access to other stuff like 'snicko', 'hotspot'. The decision on the appeal by Dilshan regarding his dimissal in the first Test really showed why we need the snicko. He had appeared to edge the ball to the keeper. However, he had also hit the bat with his ground (which was proven by the puff of dust emerging), which made it difficult for the umpire to really conclude whether the sound was from bat hitting ground or ball, and therefore gave the decision in favour of the batsman!
Well, it's too early to make the verdict, but the basic rules of the 'referrals' are quite flawed, and the ICC need to have a hard look at them if they want this to be a success!
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Batting for bowlers
From Prem Mohanty, Thailand
Cricket must really have been tough for batsmen when the trend was for uncovered pitches and zero protective equipment. Add to that no limit on the number of bouncers allowed in an over. Over the years it has evolved to be more of a batsman's game but in retrospect, its not changed a lot atleast when it comes to Test Cricket.
The pitch for the second test of the India v Sri Lanka series at Galle has different characteristics at both ends. Now I do understand that Galle had been ravaged by the Tsunami and the ground was rebuilt from scratch. But a pitch like this on the first day and the way the batsmen tackled the variable bounce reminds me of the days when uncovered pitches was the norm.
Here in Bangkok we play using taped tennis balls and we play on a surface which resembles a hard court and clay court put together.The games were quite predictable where bowlers had to suffer a lot. One day someone suggested that we add two extra layers of tape representing the seam. Now who's heard of that. We decided to try it out and voila! The batsmen started having a torrid time. Seam movement, swing,plays n misses, all seemed so surreal. Now our weekend games have become much more interesting with bowlers being more in command.
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Bowlers should welcome referrals
From Ramji Rajamani, India
At the first Test in Colombo, something unusual happened. I am not referring to an Indian loss - there is nothing unusual about it! Virendra Sehwag padded up to an innocuous delivery from Murali. Mahela Jayawardene asked for a referral and third umpire gave him out. No on-field umpire could have given him out - to a naked eye, the ball was missing leg stump. But the replays showed otherwise! Wow, I like it.
Because the referrals will bring spin bowling back to the fore. Marginal decisions, such as bat-pad decisions, and leg-befores could be increasingly decided by referrals. Referrals will more often than not mean wickets. Because thanks to the referrals, no batsman will thrust his pad to block innocuous deliveries. Far too long, batsmen have got away. Now, they will only be forced to play with their bats instead of their pads.
Because batsmen will need to have good footwork to play spinners. This will make spinners think of ways to prise out batsmen with flight and pace variations. It will be a good contest. Because pacers will also come to the party and be aided with close (otherwise drifting-down-the-leg side or touch too high) decisions. Because batsmen will need all of technique, application, and luck (40-40-20) to survive, it will good to watch.
Far too long, batsmen have used heavy bats to make the game lopsided. You needed some balance to spice up the game. Gosh, you may end with very few draws! Because Test cricket needs that little bit to stay in limelight in these T20 times! Referrals could just be one of the tonics. There are some obvious ones, some other time! I know the batsmen are complaining. Bowlers are not.......that's refreshing!
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Technically speaking
From Varun Dhyani, United Kingdom
I am a technical man and view the entire game on technical ground. Not that the game does not interest me. There has been lot of discussion on sustaining and expanding cricket's popularity. Particularly in context with Test Cricket which is really threatened due to lack of public interest. I have a suggestion here to keep the people's interest glued to the game.
Cricket revolves, technically, around ball, bat and pitch. If 'variable' component is introduced in pitch or bat or ball, game would become interesting. Say for example, use of new, 30 overs and 60 overs ball on certain conditions and rules. Imagine a match where the opening batsman has got right to tell umpire to start with 30 over ball.
Or when bowler takes a wicket he given the opportunity to decide what age of ball to be used. And if both the batsman score 50 runs between them without loosing wicket, they given chance to say which ball they want further.
Another way is letting both sides allow play as much innings they want in a 5 day Test Cricket Period. At the end of 5th day, the average per innings would decide who won the match.
There are many ways where some twist and turns could be brought in ball (different weight), innings(more innings) and number of players(more players allowed). It would bring lot of interest in the game to the crowd who are already watching cricket and also among those who never watched and have conventional image of the Test Cricket
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