Flying Bails and Crouching Stumps
arahim
electrons can not be told apart and what does the wording of the law
say where in the air the bails have to be before it is a dismissal.
One wonders what those who say that the bails have to fall below a
certain level think whether a player is runout if the bails are still
up there when the batsmen cross the line and what hapens if the bails
hit the ground and then jump back up and place themselves in the
groove. But be that as it may this is an instance of too much
attention being paid to words and not enough to the spirit of the
laws. If one were to take a guess at the framers intentions was he
really thinking of such cases? If not then what is the spirit of the
law and how do you apply it? First it would be helpful to put it in
some context (as I see it). What is the intention of the law. There
are going to be close shaves where the ball touches the stumps but the
bails do not come off. In the pre film, tv, slow motion era how does
one determine whether the ball "hit" the stumps or not? Well the
umpire can give his opinion or you can have a simple rule that the
ball has to hit the wicket hard enough that the bails get dislodged
which is not only visually pleasing but also lets the audience sitting
in the stands at once know what has happened (mostly). Or one could
have accomodated a system like the lbw where the "close bowled"
decisions became the opinion of the umpire. Now obviously there have
been cases where it was obvious that the ball had hit the stumps but
with such a small momentum as to not cause visual disturbance.
jzfredricks
> What is the intention of the law.
Surely the intention was to create a Law that;
1) made written, logical sense
2) made "cricket" sense
3) was easy to rule on, for both players and umpires
Same could be said for probably all the Laws.
Re "made written, logical sense";
I think it fails a little bit. Some terms are unclear. It states "if a
bail is removed", but doesn't clarify if what happens if the bail
flies in the air (and is fully removed) and lands back in the groove.
It WAS removed, but no longer is. The Law PERHAPS tries to cover this
with the term "disturbance". I personally don't think "bails flipping
in the air and changing spots" is the disturbance the Law-makers had
in mind.
Re "made cricket sense"
Sure. Ball hits the stumps, you're out. No issue here, is there?
Re "was easy to rule on, for both players and umpires"
I understand the need for the disturbance clause. Ball flicks the
stumps, bails move a bit. Same thing happens later and it moves a lot.
Is they out or not? For the average cricket player/ump we need a
simple way to decide - if the bail falls off, it's out. If magic
happens and the bail moves but doesn't fall... so be it... not out.
This is nice and simple and should not change. As a player I like it -
each time I've seen it happen it's almost a comical, fun event.
There's virtually no tension involved, or arguing about "some silly
rule made 100s of years ago it was clearly OUT!!!".
Current wording;
"The wicket is put down if a bail is completely removed from the top
of the stumps, or a stump is struck out of the ground by..."
Change it to;
"The wicket is put down if a bail is completely and permanently
removed from its resting spot on top of the stumps, or a stump is
struck out of the ground by..."
"completely" and "its" covers bails swapping positions and lodging
between the stumps. Out.
"permanently" covers disturbances. Not out.
arahim
I know where you are coming from. We have another case like this going
on here at rsc. Alvey feels it is not clear enough what he is and is
trying to get PCB to say it in unambiguous terms so he maintains the
copyright on the term that aptly describes him.