CRICKET, like everything else in life, has changed over the years, and after two years of deliberation the laws of the game have been revised to reflect the change.
That is great. Change is natural, change was necessary, and there is no question that the laws of the game needed to be revised, that some of the changes - including the one defining a throw - should make a difference, and in an age where unfair play appears to be the order of the day, that penalties are a must.
The penalty to be awarded for unfair play, however, could make a farce of the game.
According to the revised law, penalties will be awarded for such things as changing the condition of the ball unfairly, deliberate attempts to distract or obstruct a batsman, time-wasting, and unauthorised absence from the field of play, and that is good. For too long players have been allowed to get away with breaking the rules, with unfair play, and with showing little or no respect for the umpires.
The penalty, however, may not be the answer.
The penalty for each offence is five runs to the opposing team, and with so many offences - some eight or nine - for which a five-run penalty will be awarded a match could easily be decided not by runs scored but by the number of penalty runs awarded.
Based on the revised laws, it is possible that after a contest between bat and ball, which is what the game is all about, a team could score more runs than the opposition and still lose the match.
As an example, the team batting first in a one-day match could score 150 runs, dismiss or limit the team batting second for 133 and lose the match simply because it committed three offences while in the field and gave away 18 penalty points.
Cricket is a game in which the team that scores more runs wins the match and that certainly would not be cricket.
Something needed to be done about the rising instances of unfair play in the game, but it should not be something which could change the principle of the game.
According to Johnny Gayle, former Test umpire and current secretary of the West Indies Cricket Umpires Association, the new laws, the penalties, were introduced primarily to give extra and instant powers to umpires at the lower levels of the game where there are no match referees.
If that is so, instead of making it possible that a team could score more runs than another and still lose a match, instead of running the risk of making a mockery of the game, the lawmakers should probably have taken a leaf out of football's book and given the umpires the authority to send off those players who break the laws and in so doing bring the game into disrepute.
FROM THE
BOUNDARY
Tony Becca
