What if?
Cricket followers are naturally averse to any fundamental changes to the fabric of the game. Mooted revisions to the laws - which seem sacred, and inviolate – are debated with painstaking precision and fraught emotions. But that wasn’t always the case. In cricket’s youth, before it was mythologised, the core mechanics of the sport were regularly re-engineered with an insouciance unimaginable today. So why not invoke that spirit again, and ask the question – what if?
Make the stumps bigger Despite DRS, bat still dominates ball – to cricket’s detriment. Umpire reviews only narrow the gap in test cricket (when India aren’t playing) and in spinners conditions – although ultimately it may encourage changes to team composition and pitch preparation.
A more organic means of correcting the relationship between batsman and bowler is simply to make the target bigger – by raising the stumps and lengthening the bails. Alternatively, make the ball (or the bat) smaller.
Advantage: easier for the bowlers to get wickets
Disadvantages: every club in the world would need new equipment, and all batsmen will need to reconstruct their technique.
Twelve ball overs There is nothing sacrosanct about having six balls in an over. In the past, test cricket has used both four and eight ball overs.
Many village T20 matches adjust over-lengths to speed things up. A huge proportion of cricket’s playing time is spent resetting from one end to the other – so why not cut this in half, in formal cricket, by doubling the duration of each over?
Advantages: less walking = more cricket, and better value for spectators. When on top, bowlers could exert more pressure.
Disadvantages: harder for the fielding side when struggling. Difficult for broadcasters to get the ad breaks in.
LBW outside leg stump In certain conditions, you can be out LBW to a ball which has pitched outside off stump. There is no logical reason why this shouldn’t also be the case when it pitches outside leg. What’s the difference, either morally or geometrically?
Advantages: another way of redressing the bat-ball balance. Demands batsmen play with their bat, not pad.
Disadvantage: might make things too easy for spinners.
Substitutes When a player sustains a significant injury early in a match, and can take no further meaningful part, it severely distorts everything which follows. Think of what happened with Zaheer Khan for India at Lord’s last summer; from the second session onwards, it was no longer a fair contest. In those circumstances, wouldn’t it make for a better spectacle to allow substitutes to bat and bowl?
Advantage Cricket is meant to be XI versus XI, not XI v X.
Disadvantage Huge potential for abuse and gamesmanship which might be hard to police. For example, a pace bowler feigning injury in the fourth innings to make way for a second spinner.
Laissez-faire limited overs Fielding circles, powerplays, maximum numbers of overs per bowler – what purpose is served by any of the match conditions of short-form cricket? The underlying logic is to make the games more interesting by upping the run rate. But usually it’s the other way around – the rigidity of the format has led to predictability, making proceedings less interesting. The obvious solution is to scrap all the regulations and play free-form – no bowler limits, no gimmicks, nothing. Just like test matches, but shorter – and much more absorbing.
Advantages: Far greater variety of fielding tactics, and every match would be be a fresh challenge for the captains.
Disadvantage: None.
Maxie Allen
“Advantages: Far greater variety of fielding tactics, and every match would be be a fresh challenge for the captains.
Disadvantage: None”.
That’s disregarding the history of how those changes came to be. When there were no fielding restrictions, you get the Mike Brearlys of the world placing 9 fielders on the boundary. With no Bowling restrictions, you get your Muralies playing 25 overs of stifling the opposition.
These rules did not come to stifle fielding creativity and create predictability, but because the game was becoming predictable, formulaic. I’m all for removing the limited overs rules, but keep in mind this will make each game much less of a fresh challenge and much more of a repetitive undertaking.
No, No, No! It’s tough enough being a batsmen already. Don’t forget that we get to make one mistake, where as bowlers get to make as many as (say) an Australia selector.
Good article – some interesting suggestions. Two things I would consider changing:
1. You should not be given out stumped off a wide. The ball’s judged illegal (and meriting an extra run and extra ball) on the grounds the batsman’s unable to reach it, yet he can still be given out to it. It’s a ridiculous contradiction – the stupidest rule in cricket.
2. No overthrows allowed if a fielder hits the stumps direct (and the batsman’s given in). This would encourage fielders to have a shy at the stumps without their accuracy potentially being penalised,
Stupidest rule in cricket? Why? The batsman’s gone out of his ground and he’s been stumped. So what? If anything, the batsman has to have done something pretty daft to get stumped, so probably deserves it.
It may not be the best rule, but I can think of far worse. Leg-byes, for instance, are completely against the spirit of cricket and completely add odds with other rules.