There’s something terribly self-flagellating about a law that demands the removal of a contestant - in a World Cup! - before he or she has faced a ball because they took longer than two minutes to make it to the crease. Of course, this ignited the age-old debate about the “spirit of cricket” (that went down with the Titanic, didn’t it?) but I am far more interested in the loony tunes lawmakers who dreamed this nonsense up.
Quite apart from the pernicious negativity of finding ways to sabotage their own sport (rugby suffers from the same thing), it surely only has application in first-class cricket, where time-wasting among sides playing for a draw is not unknown. But a 50-over match? Who cares if it takes three minutes rather than two?
There’s also the fact such arbitrary lawmaking leaves no room for the drama of the game nor for cricketers more revered than others. Let me take you back to a county one-day match played at Taunton in Somerset long ago, starring the great West Indian master-blaster Sir Vivian Richards.
His style, coming out to bat, was to take his time. He didn’t march to the wicket, he strolled, he swaggered, he surveyed his dominion. The crowd loved it; sang him all the way to the pitch as he accepted the adulation. He chewed his ever-present gum. He stared darkly at all the fielders, as if they were insects - insignificant impediments to his greatness. He strolled round the pitch tapping the wicket here and there with his bat; he didn’t bother looking at the bowler. It’s hard to look at the man you are about to humble.
All the while, mind, the Somerset crowd serenaded him. It was like a football chant, but at a cricket match. The whole process seemed to take about 15 minutes. Probably didn’t, but it felt like it. If he’d been timed out (the law didn’t exist then), they would have found pieces of umpire floating in the nearby River Tone for some time afterwards. Third ball went for six and then he was out early. I’m not sure (scrumpy may have been taken) but it seemed like his innings didn’t last as long as his walk to get there.
I reckon that if the aforementioned World Cup match had involved India and, say, Virat Kohli timed out, the umpires might have found a way to make no such decision. The Indian crowd may have taken it, well, a bit amiss.
It’s not the only silly rule in cricket. Earlier this year in Australian limited overs cricket, Brisbane player Michael Neser caught the ball in the deep. He realised momentum would take him across the rope - so flung the ball in the air, over the boundary. He ran to retrieve it, about two-and-a half metres outside the playing area and leaped in the air so none of his body was touching the ground as he made the catch, throwing the ball inside the rope while still in the air - then re-catching it.
If that’s out, my backside is a pineapple. If you cannot catch a ball in the field of play and you stray over the boundary, that’s a six. Neser’s athleticism? Brilliant, but that’s not cricket - it’s volleyball.
Someone also needs to revisit the Duckworth-Lewis maths formula for deciding rain-affected matches after New Zealand’s loss to Pakistan, when the Black Caps scored 400 runs but lost to a team that had scored 200-odd when the rain fell. The thing is, you see, in the entire 50-year history of one-day internationals, close to 5000 matches, only one team has ever scored more than 400 in a runs chase to win.
A cricket match can turn in an instant - take, for example, Glenn Maxwell’s astonishing 201 to grab victory from Afghanistan. He came in when Australia were five for 69 and joined up with partner Pat Cummins at seven for 91. If the rain had fallen at either point, would Duckworth-Lewis have given Australia the win? No bleedin’ way, cobber.
Surely Duckworth-Lewis needs to be reconfigured to take such things into account. Or maybe we just time them out?
Paul Lewis has been a journalist since the last ice age. Sport has been a lifetime pleasure and part of a professional career during which he has written four books, and covered Rugby World Cups, America’s Cups, Olympic & Commonwealth Games and more.
