Showing posts with label cricket. Show all posts
Showing posts with label cricket. Show all posts
Tuesday 4 July 2023
Cricket Explained: When does a Ball Become Dead
By Wisden Staff
The controversial dismissal of Jonny Bairstow on day five of the second Ashes Test has sparked a debate over the dead ball rule. But when does the ball stop being in play?Bairstow ducked under the last delivery of the 52nd over, bowled by Cam Green, and the ball safely nestled into the hands of wicketkeeper Alex Carey. Bairstow, assuming the ball was dead and the over complete, strolled out of his crease towards non-striker Ben Stokes. The alert Carey, however, immediately threw the ball towards the stumps, and the series-defining direct hit sent back Bairstow, who was well short.
When does the ball become dead?
Law 20 of Cricket talks extensively about the various instances when the ball will become dead. For this particular instance, two clauses can be referenced.
According to Law 20.1.1.1, the ball is dead when it is “finally settled in the hands of the wicketkeeper or of the bowler.” Only the umpire can decide whether the ball is finally settled or not, according to Law 20.2.
Related Story: Watch: The 2006 McCullum run out of Muralitharan that resurfaced after the Bairstow controversy
Law 20.1.2 further elaborates: “The ball shall be considered dead when it is clear to the bowler’s end umpire that the fielding side and both batters at the wicket have ceased to regard it as in play.”
Law 20.1.2 further elaborates: “The ball shall be considered dead when it is clear to the bowler’s end umpire that the fielding side and both batters at the wicket have ceased to regard it as in play.”
Was the ball dead during the Carey-Bairstow incident?
Replays of the over show Bairstow wandering out of his crease thrice. On the third instance, Carey hit the stumps. On all occasions, Bairstow slid his right foot across the crease after the ball had been delivered and left by him, presumably indicating that he would not be running. He probably assumed the ball was dead.
However, the Laws clearly indicate that the ball is live until the “fielding side and both batters at the wicket” think otherwise.
In this particular incident, a reverse angle revealed that Carey instantly threw the ball back towards the stumps in one motion, even before Bairstow had stepped out. Carey and his teammates clearly considered the ball to still be in play, and hence, it was not considered a dead ball.
Crucially, Bairstow was still in his crease when Carey threw the ball. He did not wait to release the ball, there was no doubt that Australia still regarded the ball live and in play.
Our shared values deserve better than a pointless term like ‘spirit of cricket’
The culture of English cricket is but one concept of morality – no person, and certainly no country, has a monopoly on virtue writes Jonathan Liew in The Guardian
So let’s talk about Nepal v Ireland in the Oman Quadrangular Twenty20 series last year. Ireland are 114 for eight in the 19th over when the ball is hit towards mid-on. The Oman bowler Kamal Singh lunges at it in his follow-through. At the same time the Ireland non-striker, Andy McBrine, tries to scamper through for a single. The pair collide. McBrine falls over. Singh keeps his balance, and tosses the ball to the wicketkeeper Aasif Sheikh, with the batter still sprawled on the turf, miles out of his ground.
The laws of cricket have nothing to say on situations such as this. Neither player is deliberately obstructing the other; neither player can avoid the collision without giving up a significant sporting advantage. Sheikh is perfectly at liberty to complete the run-out. But he does not. He holds on to the ball and lets McBrine complete the single, an act of sporting goodwill that will later earn him the International Cricket Council’s Spirit of Cricket award.
Yes, here we go again: a think-piece about the current Ashes series that has very little to do with the current Ashes series. One of the reasons the dismissal of Jonny Bairstow by Alex Carey on Sunday has created so much noise is because it is one of those issues where no expertise whatsoever is required to express an opinion. Anyone can participate in this game: Rishi Sunak, Sue off Twitter, Jeremy Vine, your best mate who doesn’t really know anything about cricket but thinks Josh Tongue is a funny name. Let’s fulminate. Let’s pontificate. Let’s play.
At which point we run into the minor inconvenience of Law 20.1.2, which is basically unequivocal on the point that Bairstow was out. Nobody really seems to dispute this, or even have a workable alternative to the law as it stands. What, then, is everyone arguing about? Ultimately, it comes down to ownership and territory and narrative and culture: who gets to define cricket, and in whose benefit they do so. And thus it is again – with deepest apologies – necessary once again to discuss Bazball.
There is a common thread running through England’s new vibes-based style of cricket and the piqued outrage that has greeted Bairstow’s stumping. Both, ultimately, are grounded in an idea of impunity and presumption: an assertion that England and England alone gets to adjudicate on what is good for the game. We get to say what constitutes entertainment. We get to decide how Test cricket must be saved. And, by extension, we get to judge what is sporting and fair, the norms of behaviour that our opponents will be expected to follow. You can keep your silly rules. We stand for more.
Of course, England is by no means alone in its sense of exceptionalism. Australia has long declared itself the moral arbiter of where “the line” stands in terms of sledging. India creates most of the sport’s revenue, and before long it will probably conclude that it should be creating most of the sport’s morality as well. The through-line here is power: the power to generate headlines, to set an agenda, to establish norms and impose them on others. In a sport as ritualistic as cricket, governed as much by tacit understandings and shared assumptions as written laws, this kind of soft power allows those with a platform to build an ethical framework around their own values and priorities.
Is it outlandish to posit that the reason Bairstow strayed out of his ground was because he had internalised a mindset in which rules were optional and the vibe was the thing? Feels like the end of the over? Hell, assume it probably is. The dismissal felt wrong to me, and it may well have felt wrong to you too. But then we have all been steeped in the culture of English cricket, with all its inherent flaws and biases and blind spots. It is but one concept of sporting morality, and it is probably about time we recognised there were others.
The real shame here is that so much of the discourse either falls along tribal lines or is couched in pointless terms such as “spirit of cricket”. Perhaps we need an alternative vocabulary here: what is unsatisfyingly described as the “spirit of cricket” is so often just a kind of basic empathy, a politeness, a willingness to treat others as one would wish to be treated. There is common ground to be found here, a recognition that there are parts of every sport that rules cannot delineate, because humans are complex and life is messy and the best sports express the very fullest of both.
Let Carey be judged on his own free will, just as Sheikh was when he refused to rugn out McBrine. But you will also need to know that after Ireland’s reprieve McBrine hit the next ball for six, the last two wickets put on 13 runs and Ireland won a tight low-scoring game. Sheikh’s conscience may have been clear. But his team probably ended up bottom of the table as a result. “It would have been unfair to the opponent,” he said later. “We wouldn’t be pleased if our team had got the wicket in that manner, since it would be against our culture.”
Let us have a conversation about what cricket’s shared values should really be, and let those with the smallest platforms speak first. Let us recognise that no person, and certainly no country, has a monopoly on virtue. Let us fulminate. Let us pontificate. This is, after all, everyone’s game, and everyone can play.
So let’s talk about Nepal v Ireland in the Oman Quadrangular Twenty20 series last year. Ireland are 114 for eight in the 19th over when the ball is hit towards mid-on. The Oman bowler Kamal Singh lunges at it in his follow-through. At the same time the Ireland non-striker, Andy McBrine, tries to scamper through for a single. The pair collide. McBrine falls over. Singh keeps his balance, and tosses the ball to the wicketkeeper Aasif Sheikh, with the batter still sprawled on the turf, miles out of his ground.
The laws of cricket have nothing to say on situations such as this. Neither player is deliberately obstructing the other; neither player can avoid the collision without giving up a significant sporting advantage. Sheikh is perfectly at liberty to complete the run-out. But he does not. He holds on to the ball and lets McBrine complete the single, an act of sporting goodwill that will later earn him the International Cricket Council’s Spirit of Cricket award.
Yes, here we go again: a think-piece about the current Ashes series that has very little to do with the current Ashes series. One of the reasons the dismissal of Jonny Bairstow by Alex Carey on Sunday has created so much noise is because it is one of those issues where no expertise whatsoever is required to express an opinion. Anyone can participate in this game: Rishi Sunak, Sue off Twitter, Jeremy Vine, your best mate who doesn’t really know anything about cricket but thinks Josh Tongue is a funny name. Let’s fulminate. Let’s pontificate. Let’s play.
At which point we run into the minor inconvenience of Law 20.1.2, which is basically unequivocal on the point that Bairstow was out. Nobody really seems to dispute this, or even have a workable alternative to the law as it stands. What, then, is everyone arguing about? Ultimately, it comes down to ownership and territory and narrative and culture: who gets to define cricket, and in whose benefit they do so. And thus it is again – with deepest apologies – necessary once again to discuss Bazball.
There is a common thread running through England’s new vibes-based style of cricket and the piqued outrage that has greeted Bairstow’s stumping. Both, ultimately, are grounded in an idea of impunity and presumption: an assertion that England and England alone gets to adjudicate on what is good for the game. We get to say what constitutes entertainment. We get to decide how Test cricket must be saved. And, by extension, we get to judge what is sporting and fair, the norms of behaviour that our opponents will be expected to follow. You can keep your silly rules. We stand for more.
Of course, England is by no means alone in its sense of exceptionalism. Australia has long declared itself the moral arbiter of where “the line” stands in terms of sledging. India creates most of the sport’s revenue, and before long it will probably conclude that it should be creating most of the sport’s morality as well. The through-line here is power: the power to generate headlines, to set an agenda, to establish norms and impose them on others. In a sport as ritualistic as cricket, governed as much by tacit understandings and shared assumptions as written laws, this kind of soft power allows those with a platform to build an ethical framework around their own values and priorities.
Is it outlandish to posit that the reason Bairstow strayed out of his ground was because he had internalised a mindset in which rules were optional and the vibe was the thing? Feels like the end of the over? Hell, assume it probably is. The dismissal felt wrong to me, and it may well have felt wrong to you too. But then we have all been steeped in the culture of English cricket, with all its inherent flaws and biases and blind spots. It is but one concept of sporting morality, and it is probably about time we recognised there were others.
The real shame here is that so much of the discourse either falls along tribal lines or is couched in pointless terms such as “spirit of cricket”. Perhaps we need an alternative vocabulary here: what is unsatisfyingly described as the “spirit of cricket” is so often just a kind of basic empathy, a politeness, a willingness to treat others as one would wish to be treated. There is common ground to be found here, a recognition that there are parts of every sport that rules cannot delineate, because humans are complex and life is messy and the best sports express the very fullest of both.
Let Carey be judged on his own free will, just as Sheikh was when he refused to rugn out McBrine. But you will also need to know that after Ireland’s reprieve McBrine hit the next ball for six, the last two wickets put on 13 runs and Ireland won a tight low-scoring game. Sheikh’s conscience may have been clear. But his team probably ended up bottom of the table as a result. “It would have been unfair to the opponent,” he said later. “We wouldn’t be pleased if our team had got the wicket in that manner, since it would be against our culture.”
Let us have a conversation about what cricket’s shared values should really be, and let those with the smallest platforms speak first. Let us recognise that no person, and certainly no country, has a monopoly on virtue. Let us fulminate. Let us pontificate. This is, after all, everyone’s game, and everyone can play.
Monday 3 July 2023
‘Same old Aussies, always cheating!’ Chants cut deep for a nation still scarred by sandpaper
It was shocking to watch a baying crowd at Lord’s hurl abuse at players for effecting a stumping within the laws of the game writes Megan Maurice in The Guardian
In most sports, players simply follow the rules laid out for them, which are enforced by umpires or referees. If they break a rule, a consequence is applied and play resumes. There are times, naturally, when athletes are accused of being unsporting, but there is rarely a drawn-out debate over players following the rules exactly as written and being scolded for doing so.
Cricket is a very different beast in many ways. No more clearly did we see this play out than on day five of the second Ashes Test. Where the two cricketing nations of England and Australia are concerned, history is a living and hotly contested document, one that is constantly being grappled over and argued about. So as soon as Jonny Bairstow was stumped by Alex Carey and the third umpire sent him on his way, battle lines were drawn between Australian fans staking out their ground on the side of a “fair and legal dismissal” and the English abandoning their Sunday lunch plans to fight for “the spirit of cricket”.
For those Australians, the incident cut deep. The scars of sandpaper-gate are still visible. Memories are fresh of cricket heroes crying on international television, the prime minister indicting it as a “shocking disappointment” and Australian cricket being brought into disrepute. It all sits just below the surface. Yet as difficult as it was, most Australian fans took the criticism on the chin; they were equally disappointed with the team and prepared for the onslaught of derision.
However, this is a new era of the Australian men’s cricket team. The biggest criticism most people can make of captain Pat Cummins is that he cares too deeply about social issues. Coach Andrew McDonald seems satisfied to work in the background, rather than front the media. The team has rehabilitated its image considerably over the last five years.
So it was painful for the scars to be ripped open so forcefully and painfully as boos rang out around Lord’s, followed by cries of “Aussie! Aussie! Aussie! Cheat! Cheat! Cheat!” and “Same old Aussies, always cheating!”
Then there was the abuse of players as they walked through the Long Room to lunch, which was perhaps even more galling considering the waiting list of approximately 29 years and £500 ($955 AUD) annual membership fee paid to be part of this exclusive club.
With history simmering under the surface, it was shocking to watch the baying crowd hurl abuse at the touring players – not for breaking a key law of the game around attempting to alter the condition of the ball – but for their keeper throwing the ball at the stumps and effecting a stumping within the laws of the game.
Once the immediate injustice of the situation settled down, responses have mostly been tinged with bemusement. Most people can name a similar incident that occurred in club or junior cricket, with an unsuspecting batter, who did not quite have a grasp on what a crease was or the importance of staying in one while batting, caught out by a more wily wicketkeeper.
Many Australians have been quick to point out the hypocrisy of the uproar from England – with incidents from Bairstow’s shy at the stumps of Marnus Labuschagne the day before, to his similar dismissal of New Zealand’s Colin de Grandhomme in a 2022 Test match, to current England coach Brendon McCullum’s dismissal of Sri Lanka’s Muttiah Muralitharan while the latter was celebrating the century of teammate Kumar Sangakkara.
The mood of the nation was neatly summed up by cricket writer Dan Liebke who noted: “Always very interesting to me how the spirit of cricket seems to revolve around England batters being allowed to bat on even when they’re out.”
Between the jokes, there is a genuine confusion about what the “spirit of cricket” entails and when it is applied. These debates usually crop up whenever a Mankad is effected, but to have widened the field to include stumpings makes things even more complicated. For Australian fans, it was one thing to face up to the accusation of cheating when it was true, but quite another when it occurred in this murky, grey area between the rules and the mysterious “spirit of the game” – an area for which England, at least, seem to hold a map.
In most sports, players simply follow the rules laid out for them, which are enforced by umpires or referees. If they break a rule, a consequence is applied and play resumes. There are times, naturally, when athletes are accused of being unsporting, but there is rarely a drawn-out debate over players following the rules exactly as written and being scolded for doing so.
Cricket is a very different beast in many ways. No more clearly did we see this play out than on day five of the second Ashes Test. Where the two cricketing nations of England and Australia are concerned, history is a living and hotly contested document, one that is constantly being grappled over and argued about. So as soon as Jonny Bairstow was stumped by Alex Carey and the third umpire sent him on his way, battle lines were drawn between Australian fans staking out their ground on the side of a “fair and legal dismissal” and the English abandoning their Sunday lunch plans to fight for “the spirit of cricket”.
For those Australians, the incident cut deep. The scars of sandpaper-gate are still visible. Memories are fresh of cricket heroes crying on international television, the prime minister indicting it as a “shocking disappointment” and Australian cricket being brought into disrepute. It all sits just below the surface. Yet as difficult as it was, most Australian fans took the criticism on the chin; they were equally disappointed with the team and prepared for the onslaught of derision.
However, this is a new era of the Australian men’s cricket team. The biggest criticism most people can make of captain Pat Cummins is that he cares too deeply about social issues. Coach Andrew McDonald seems satisfied to work in the background, rather than front the media. The team has rehabilitated its image considerably over the last five years.
So it was painful for the scars to be ripped open so forcefully and painfully as boos rang out around Lord’s, followed by cries of “Aussie! Aussie! Aussie! Cheat! Cheat! Cheat!” and “Same old Aussies, always cheating!”
Then there was the abuse of players as they walked through the Long Room to lunch, which was perhaps even more galling considering the waiting list of approximately 29 years and £500 ($955 AUD) annual membership fee paid to be part of this exclusive club.
With history simmering under the surface, it was shocking to watch the baying crowd hurl abuse at the touring players – not for breaking a key law of the game around attempting to alter the condition of the ball – but for their keeper throwing the ball at the stumps and effecting a stumping within the laws of the game.
Once the immediate injustice of the situation settled down, responses have mostly been tinged with bemusement. Most people can name a similar incident that occurred in club or junior cricket, with an unsuspecting batter, who did not quite have a grasp on what a crease was or the importance of staying in one while batting, caught out by a more wily wicketkeeper.
Many Australians have been quick to point out the hypocrisy of the uproar from England – with incidents from Bairstow’s shy at the stumps of Marnus Labuschagne the day before, to his similar dismissal of New Zealand’s Colin de Grandhomme in a 2022 Test match, to current England coach Brendon McCullum’s dismissal of Sri Lanka’s Muttiah Muralitharan while the latter was celebrating the century of teammate Kumar Sangakkara.
The mood of the nation was neatly summed up by cricket writer Dan Liebke who noted: “Always very interesting to me how the spirit of cricket seems to revolve around England batters being allowed to bat on even when they’re out.”
Between the jokes, there is a genuine confusion about what the “spirit of cricket” entails and when it is applied. These debates usually crop up whenever a Mankad is effected, but to have widened the field to include stumpings makes things even more complicated. For Australian fans, it was one thing to face up to the accusation of cheating when it was true, but quite another when it occurred in this murky, grey area between the rules and the mysterious “spirit of the game” – an area for which England, at least, seem to hold a map.
Tuesday 27 June 2023
English cricket’s reign of shame exposed with devastating admission of guilt
Damning report must act as a brutal wake-up call and a line cannot be drawn under this with prejudice rife within the sport writes Jonathan Liew in The Guardian
You may want to sit down for this part. Turns out – no, seriously – that a sport created and codified for the purpose of allowing rich white landowners to bet against each other, and then exported around the world at gunpoint with the promise that it would civilise savage peoples, may not actually be that progressive.
How can this possibly have happened? Who do we see about this? And who’s asking, anyway?
The publication of the Independent Commission for Equity in Cricket’s report into systemic discrimination in the English game will doubtless be described as many things. A wake‑up call. A line in the sand. A humiliation. What it represents to those who have been arguing the point for many years is, rather, a kind of historical artefact: documentary proof that English cricket’s in-built prejudice against women, people of colour and people from poorer backgrounds is not some fey liberal invention or a jaundiced troublemaker’s charter, but a lived reality for many people for many years, perhaps even generations.
It is above all a devastatingly frank document, both in its analysis of the problem and its proposed solutions. The England and Wales Cricket Board’s first‑look response, a wide-ranging apology for the injustices that have occurred on its watch, may feel instinctively like so much corporate whitewash. But even a few years ago the very idea that the national governing body would admit its complicity in a racist, sexist system would have felt fanciful. In this case, diagnosis really can be the first step of the treatment.
And here the ICEC helpfully provides the hard data to back up decades of hunches and anecdotes. A staggering 87% of respondents of Pakistani and Bangladeshi heritage, 82% with Indian heritage and 75% of all black respondents reported encountering discrimination in the game. The real kicker, though, is the deficit of trust that the vast majority felt with a game that was supposed to protect them: a feeling that cricket’s authorities, the white male captains and coaches and chief executives and board chairs who hold all the power in the game, would instinctively lean towards the status quo.
South Asians make up 28% of the game’s recreational pool, but just 2.8% of the sport’s executive-level positions. Black participation was measured by a Sport England survey to be so low as to be statistically irrelevant. The percentage of England male cricketers who were privately educated was 58% in 2021, compared to 7% in the population at large. For years anybody pointing this out has met a wall of complacency and silence, a modern version of the classic Henry Newbolt poem: “Play up! Play up! And play the game!” This is, after all, England. We don’t talk about these things.
You may want to sit down for this part. Turns out – no, seriously – that a sport created and codified for the purpose of allowing rich white landowners to bet against each other, and then exported around the world at gunpoint with the promise that it would civilise savage peoples, may not actually be that progressive.
How can this possibly have happened? Who do we see about this? And who’s asking, anyway?
The publication of the Independent Commission for Equity in Cricket’s report into systemic discrimination in the English game will doubtless be described as many things. A wake‑up call. A line in the sand. A humiliation. What it represents to those who have been arguing the point for many years is, rather, a kind of historical artefact: documentary proof that English cricket’s in-built prejudice against women, people of colour and people from poorer backgrounds is not some fey liberal invention or a jaundiced troublemaker’s charter, but a lived reality for many people for many years, perhaps even generations.
It is above all a devastatingly frank document, both in its analysis of the problem and its proposed solutions. The England and Wales Cricket Board’s first‑look response, a wide-ranging apology for the injustices that have occurred on its watch, may feel instinctively like so much corporate whitewash. But even a few years ago the very idea that the national governing body would admit its complicity in a racist, sexist system would have felt fanciful. In this case, diagnosis really can be the first step of the treatment.
And here the ICEC helpfully provides the hard data to back up decades of hunches and anecdotes. A staggering 87% of respondents of Pakistani and Bangladeshi heritage, 82% with Indian heritage and 75% of all black respondents reported encountering discrimination in the game. The real kicker, though, is the deficit of trust that the vast majority felt with a game that was supposed to protect them: a feeling that cricket’s authorities, the white male captains and coaches and chief executives and board chairs who hold all the power in the game, would instinctively lean towards the status quo.
South Asians make up 28% of the game’s recreational pool, but just 2.8% of the sport’s executive-level positions. Black participation was measured by a Sport England survey to be so low as to be statistically irrelevant. The percentage of England male cricketers who were privately educated was 58% in 2021, compared to 7% in the population at large. For years anybody pointing this out has met a wall of complacency and silence, a modern version of the classic Henry Newbolt poem: “Play up! Play up! And play the game!” This is, after all, England. We don’t talk about these things.
The debate sparked by Black Lives Matter has been steered away from meaningful change. Photograph: Reuters
The first thing to note is that there are certain people – many people – for whom all this is evidence that the world is simply working as it should. Your one black friend makes you an ally. Your one female cricket writer makes your publication diverse. Your one British Asian prime minister makes your country progressive. And your one working-class men’s Test captain makes your team representative. For these people there has long been a kind of selective blindness at work here: an image of English cricket as a kind of idyllic safe space, a world of village greens and good chaps, one of whom is called Khan, actually, so stick that in your pipe and smoke it.
It is a malaise almost as old as England itself, and perhaps the most devastating parts of the report are those that deal with cricket’s historical baggage, the legacy of Victorian Britain and the slave trade, the inequities that were built into the game from its very foundation.
Nobody gets to draw a line under this. Nobody gets to move on until everybody gets to move on
“Cricket needs to engage more frankly with the fact that [its] history is replete with tensions and social conflicts, even histories of brutality and oppression,” the report states. For some this will be nothing more than a statement of the obvious. But it is also perhaps the first time anybody remotely near a position of power has dared to utter it.
And of course you do not need to go back centuries to glimpse how cricket’s original sin continues to inflect it into the present day. It was in 1995 that the Independent lauded the fact that England’s (all‑white) pace attack “did not for once look like a United Nations strike force”. The same year, Surrey’s chief executive Glyn Woodman trumpeted the measures he had taken to deter British West Indies fans from attending the Oval Test.
“Twenty years ago parts of the ground were almost no-go areas,” he said. “They could sit wherever they liked, and they can’t do that now because of pre-selling of tickets.” And lest you regard even this as ancient history, then consider that one of the most bitter debates in the game at the moment is whether Eton and Harrow should be the only two schools who get to play at Lord’s.
The first thing to note is that there are certain people – many people – for whom all this is evidence that the world is simply working as it should. Your one black friend makes you an ally. Your one female cricket writer makes your publication diverse. Your one British Asian prime minister makes your country progressive. And your one working-class men’s Test captain makes your team representative. For these people there has long been a kind of selective blindness at work here: an image of English cricket as a kind of idyllic safe space, a world of village greens and good chaps, one of whom is called Khan, actually, so stick that in your pipe and smoke it.
It is a malaise almost as old as England itself, and perhaps the most devastating parts of the report are those that deal with cricket’s historical baggage, the legacy of Victorian Britain and the slave trade, the inequities that were built into the game from its very foundation.
Nobody gets to draw a line under this. Nobody gets to move on until everybody gets to move on
“Cricket needs to engage more frankly with the fact that [its] history is replete with tensions and social conflicts, even histories of brutality and oppression,” the report states. For some this will be nothing more than a statement of the obvious. But it is also perhaps the first time anybody remotely near a position of power has dared to utter it.
And of course you do not need to go back centuries to glimpse how cricket’s original sin continues to inflect it into the present day. It was in 1995 that the Independent lauded the fact that England’s (all‑white) pace attack “did not for once look like a United Nations strike force”. The same year, Surrey’s chief executive Glyn Woodman trumpeted the measures he had taken to deter British West Indies fans from attending the Oval Test.
“Twenty years ago parts of the ground were almost no-go areas,” he said. “They could sit wherever they liked, and they can’t do that now because of pre-selling of tickets.” And lest you regard even this as ancient history, then consider that one of the most bitter debates in the game at the moment is whether Eton and Harrow should be the only two schools who get to play at Lord’s.
West Indies fans celebrate during the fifth Test between England and the West Indies at the Oval in August 1976. Photograph: Fresco/Evening Standard/Hulton Archive/Getty Images
Similarly, the debate catalysed in 2020 by Black Lives Matter and Azeem Rafiq has been maliciously steered away from a conversation about meaningful change towards the more headline-friendly territory of witch hunts, who said what to whom, and who is a racist, whatever that means. One of the report’s more understandable blind spots is the role of the media and political class in actively seeking to derail the cause of diversity in an attempt to validate and provoke the prejudices of its older white male constituency (or “Type K individuals”, as the report so deliciously categorises them). But you get a flavour in the commission’s decision to anonymise all evidence to ward against “the impact of media reporting on those discussing discrimination in cricket, [which] was often alarming and profound”. The merciless hounding of Rafiq by the right-wing press springs to mind here.
Doubtless many of the same people will now call for a line to be drawn under English cricket’s reign of shame. Sorry. Nobody gets to draw a line under this. Nobody gets to move on until everybody gets to move on. Nobody gets to plead “stick to cricket”. This stuff is cricket. Are international ticket prices too high? Should we call them “batters” or “batsmen”? Is your county’s membership really representative of the area at large? How do we prevent age-group selections from being defined by whose parents can afford a set of pads and gloves? When your fast bowler with a history of racist tweets verbally abuses a Muslim opponent in an Ashes Test, do you start asking questions, or do you simply assume you already know the answers?
Similarly, the debate catalysed in 2020 by Black Lives Matter and Azeem Rafiq has been maliciously steered away from a conversation about meaningful change towards the more headline-friendly territory of witch hunts, who said what to whom, and who is a racist, whatever that means. One of the report’s more understandable blind spots is the role of the media and political class in actively seeking to derail the cause of diversity in an attempt to validate and provoke the prejudices of its older white male constituency (or “Type K individuals”, as the report so deliciously categorises them). But you get a flavour in the commission’s decision to anonymise all evidence to ward against “the impact of media reporting on those discussing discrimination in cricket, [which] was often alarming and profound”. The merciless hounding of Rafiq by the right-wing press springs to mind here.
Doubtless many of the same people will now call for a line to be drawn under English cricket’s reign of shame. Sorry. Nobody gets to draw a line under this. Nobody gets to move on until everybody gets to move on. Nobody gets to plead “stick to cricket”. This stuff is cricket. Are international ticket prices too high? Should we call them “batters” or “batsmen”? Is your county’s membership really representative of the area at large? How do we prevent age-group selections from being defined by whose parents can afford a set of pads and gloves? When your fast bowler with a history of racist tweets verbally abuses a Muslim opponent in an Ashes Test, do you start asking questions, or do you simply assume you already know the answers?
The hounding of Azeem Rafiq by the right-wing press is one of the report’s blind spots. Photograph: House of Commons/PA
And of course the backlash to this report will be severe and merciless. Those who wish to remain blind will do everything to avoid seeing. But the time for squeamishness has long passed. From its very earliest days English cricket was conceived as a Type K pastime: a game run by well‑off white men, for the benefit of well-off white men, defined and written about by well-off white men. Unsurprisingly, those well-off white men quite like things the way they are. But in many ways, English cricket brought this fight on itself. The very least it can do by way of recompense is to win it.
And of course the backlash to this report will be severe and merciless. Those who wish to remain blind will do everything to avoid seeing. But the time for squeamishness has long passed. From its very earliest days English cricket was conceived as a Type K pastime: a game run by well‑off white men, for the benefit of well-off white men, defined and written about by well-off white men. Unsurprisingly, those well-off white men quite like things the way they are. But in many ways, English cricket brought this fight on itself. The very least it can do by way of recompense is to win it.
Monday 5 June 2023
Thursday 30 March 2023
Is the ICC's pitch-rating system fit for purpose?
Why is Brisbane 2022 below average, while Ahmedabad 2021 is not? Here's why using technology to assess pitches would help weed out many of the shortcomings of the current process suggests Scott Oliver in Cricinfo
No other sport obsesses quite as much as cricket over the surfaces on which it is played. Pitches are not only a perennial object of fascination but also the subject of controversy. Take the preliminaries for the Border-Gavaskar Trophy series, with the usual dance of pre-emptive suspicion and defensiveness. A bullish Ravi Shastri called for pitches that turned from the outset, and Ian Healy talked up Australia's chances thus: "I think if they produce fair Indian wickets that are good batting wickets to begin with… we win. If they're unfair wickets … then I think India play those conditions better than us."
Then the covers came off in Nagpur and it was apparent that the pitch had been selectively watered, mowed and rolled, and that this "differential preparation" - which left bare patches outside the left-handers' off stump on a spinner's length at both ends - had ostensibly been tailored to suit the home team, who had one leftie in the top seven to the visitors' four, and two left-arm spinners to the visitors' none. Australia's players maintained a strategic silence, but was this pushing home advantage too far?
The match referee, Andy Pycroft, ultimately decided that the pitch was not worthy of sanction, yet questions around pitch preparation were nevertheless again brought into sharp focus. In the age of bilateral series, with World Test Championship points on the line, will pitch-doctoring become an ever greater temptation, as Rahul Dravid observed recently? And, more broadly, what is a "good" or "fair" pitch, and how is it determined?
How the ICC's pitch-rating system works now
The ICC's Pitch and Outfield Monitoring Process was introduced in 2006 and updated in January 2018 in an effort, they say, to reflect the variety of conditions worldwide and make member boards more accountable for the pitches they produce, as well as to introduce greater transparency in the rating of pitches.One of six potential ratings applies to both pitch and outfield for each game: very good, good, average, below average, poor and unfit, with the bottom three incurring demerit points (1, 3 and 5 respectively for the pitch, 0, 2 and 5 for the outfield). Pick up five demerit points in a rolling five-year period and your ICC ground accreditation is suspended for 12 months. Pick up ten and it is two years without international cricket. Hugely consequential for the local association, perhaps less so for the national board. In situations where a pitch underperforms, match referees must consult umpires and captains before assigning a rating.
A pitch is deemed to be "below average" if there is "either very little carry and/or bounce and/or more than occasional seam movement, or occasional variable (but not excessive or dangerous) bounce and/or occasional variable carry". Fine, but how do you determine this?
A pitch is deemed "poor" if it "does not allow an even contest between bat and ball", whether that favours batters or bowlers. The ICC's guidance goes on to invoke "excessive seam movement", "excessive unevenness of bounce", "excessive assistance to spin bowlers, especially early in the match" and "little or no seam movement or turn at any stage in the match together with no significant bounce or carry" as well as "excessive dryness" and "excessive moistness". Fine, but how exactly do you determine all that?
The notes for "clarification" in Appendix A to the ICC's literature for the ratings tell us that "Excessive means 'too much'". Sure, but how exactly do you measure that?
Too much is left to interpretation in the pitch-marking process
The truth is that it is rare for pitches to be given any of the bottom three marks. From the men's World Cup in July 2019 to the end of 2022, only six Test pitches out of 135 (and one outfield) were given a "below average" rating, five of them in 2022. Two of 2022's "below average" marks were for Rawalpindi. The first was given by Ranjan Madugalle when Australia's visit in March produced 14 wickets across the five days for 1187 runs. The second was given by Pycroft after England's visit last December, although this was subsequently overturned on appeal, which is heard by the chair of the ICC's Cricket Committee, currently Sourav Ganguly, and the ICC general manager for cricket, currently Wasim Khan, the former CEO of the Pakistan Cricket Board. How did they arrive at this judgement?The official explanation was that, "having reviewed footage of the Test Match, the ICC appeal panel […] were unanimous in their opinion that, while the guidelines had been followed by the Match Referee […] there were several redeeming features - including the fact that a result was achieved following a compelling game, with 37 out of a possible 39 wickets being taken. As such, the appeal panel concluded that the wicket did not warrant the 'below average' rating."
This is a curious logic. Ben Stokes' team scored at a historically unprecedented rate (921 runs at 6.73 runs per over) to "put time back into the game", thus drastically increasing the chance that wickets would be lost (every 43.2 balls to Pakistan's 75.6), and they won with just ten minutes' light remaining on the fifth evening. It is almost certain that England's strategy was devised after contemplating the Australia Test match in March. Is the ICC saying that such a pitch is adequate provided the Bazball approach is adopted?
When approached, in the spirit of transparency, about exactly how much of the match footage was reviewed, the ICC would only refer to the press release.
According to the pitch-ratings guidelines, an "average" pitch "lacks carry, and/or bounce and/or occasional seam movement, but [is] consistent in carry and bounce". Fine, but consistency is a property determined by frequency, and adjudicating on this implies one would watch the whole game - that is, have the full data set, as would a match referee - to be able to assess how regularly deliveries misbehaved. Was this done by the appeal panel?
What emerges from all this is a sense that the process for marking pitches contains too much "interpretative latitude" in the criteria, and as such, lacks empirical robustness - borne out by how the judgement of a person who watched an entire game (and, presumably, consulted umpires and captains, as per ICC protocol) can be overturned by those who did not. This makes it likely that a match referee who has had a "below average" mark rescinded on appeal will, the next time he finds himself deciding between "average" or "below average", be inclined to play safe, not least because the criteria plausibly allow it. Why put one's neck out?
Pycroft's next two Tests after the Rawalpindi appeal verdict was returned in January were the first two of the Border-Gavaskar series. Both the "differentially prepared" Nagpur strip (on which a wicket fell every 47.1 deliveries, albeit with Australia only selecting two frontline spinners, one of whom was a debutant) and the pitch in Delhi (a wicket every 38.8 deliveries, both sides playing three front-line spinners) were marked as "average".
The pitch for the third Test, in Indore (a wicket every 38.5 deliveries, same spin-bowling line-ups) was rated "poor" by Chris Broad, initially incurring three demerit points. The strip for the bore draw in Ahmedabad (a somnolent 1970s run rate of 2.9 and a wicket winkled every 115.7 deliveries, 22 in five days on a surface that barely changed) was rated "average", entirely understandable after the Rawalpindi overrule but surely not healthy for Test cricket.
The BCCI appealed the Indore decision; Ganguly had to recuse himself from the review process, nominating a proxy, Roger Harper. It mattered little, as the outcome was again the same: Wasim Khan and Harper "reviewed the footage" of the match and despite feeling that "the guidelines had been followed" by Broad, ultimately decided "there was not enough excessive variable bounce to warrant the 'poor' rating". Not enough. Okay then.
As opaque as all this sounds, it was evidently a good outcome for the BCCI, although one can imagine circumstances in which it may not even have bothered appealing - after all, it is not really the national board that is being sanctioned but the local association, which loses both revenue and prestige. And here is where the scope for abuse lies: Crucial matches with WTC points at stake could, in theory, be assigned to a country's second-tier grounds, with instructions to produce doctored, advantage-seeking pitches in full knowledge of the risk, or even likelihood, of demerit points, and the venue's potential loss of ICC accreditation - taking one for the team, as it were - would be duly compensated by the board.
Why not use ball-tracking to refine and add precision to the pitch-rating process?
Ultimately, the subjective, interpretative element, the lack of empirical rigour in the pitch-ratings criteria, does little to help match referees (none of whom are permitted to express an opinion about the system), and in some instances could place them under an onerous degree of "political" pressure. Presumably, then, they would welcome a more objective and data-driven framework for their assessments.The solution, potentially, is staring cricket in the face: not neutral curators but the ball-tracking technology that has been a mandatory part of the infrastructure at all ICC fixtures since the DRS was introduced in November 2009.
Essentially, match referees are rating a pitch's performance properties: pace, bounce, lateral deviation, consistency, deterioration over time. The majority of these are already measured by ball-tracking technology providers for use in their broadcasts. It is not beyond the realms of technological possibility that these properties could be given precisely calibrated parameters, within which pitches must fall to attain the various ratings, beyond which they are considered extreme.
The first step would be a deep dive into those 13-plus years of ball-tracking data (565 Tests and counting), establishing the relationships between the quantified performance properties exhibited by the various pitches and the marks assigned them. Cricketing common sense would suggest that there ought to be a fairly coherent set of correspondences between referees' verdicts and the data.
From there, you start to build the parameters. There would be some complexity here, even if some of the variables ought to be straightforwardly amenable to "parameterisation". In particular: loss of pace after pitching, consistency of pace loss (and its deterioration across the match), bounce, consistency of bounce (and its deterioration). Beyond certain thresholds, pitches would be sanctioned accordingly.
Less amenable to parameterisation, and thus more difficult to use to build a regulatory framework, would be lateral deviation, for both seam and spin (even if one would expect the deep dive to yield strong correspondences between pitch ratings and the ball-tracking data for sideways movement). Deviation upon pitching is immediately visible, of course, but the bowler's skill plays a big part. For spinners, the relevant input variables producing the degree of turn are numerous: the revolutions imparted on the ball by the bowler, the axis of rotation, the pace of the delivery, the angle of incidence with the pitch, and the age of the ball.
These variables can overlap and interact in ways that offset each other and potentially resist any one-size-fits-all parameterisation. For instance, a pitch may show "excessive" turn (once this has been defined) but it might be fairly slow turn with relatively uniform bounce. One might, in this instance, use the technology to model a relationship between pace loss and degree of turn for spinners, which would be calibrated against consensus notions of bat-ball balance.
For all the complexity around lateral deviation (where do you set the parameters, and how rigidly?), a couple of things need to be said here.
First, however difficult it is to create the framework, none of this lies beyond the scope of the existing technology. (Whether for contractual or commercial reasons, Hawk-Eye declined to comment on the viability of using its technology to assess pitch performance.)
Second, the goal is to improve the existing system, not make one that is absolutely prescriptive and infallible. The difficulties in devising an all-encompassing a priori model should not be seen as a weakness but rather a simple recognition of complexity. Seatbelts don't prevent 100% of road-accident fatalities, but having them is better than not. Thus, while it might be justified to mark down a surface on the basis of a precisely quantified pace loss after pitching, it might not be desirable to do so automatically on the basis of a fixed amount of lateral deviation. Other factors would have to be weighed up - but this would be done, precisely, by using the information provided by the ball-tracking technology.
Third, nothing is necessarily going to change. These are heuristic tools that make for a more robustly scientific way of using the criteria that are already in place and the values set out there in relation to the balance of the game. However, by supplementing the qualitative (the ICC's pitch-ratings criteria descriptions) with the quantitative (ball-tracking data), you would inevitably increase match referees' confidence in their assessments, particularly in the face of querulous and powerful national boards, and thus boost the public's confidence in the process as a whole. As such, those 565 Tests would perhaps serve as "legal precedent" of sorts: "Pitch X was marked 'poor' because it exhibited an average of n degrees of lateral deviation for seamers' full-pace deliveries on the first day, similarly to Test Y in city Z." And these verdicts would be reached independently of how the teams played on the wicket, since the latter involves facets of the game such as intent, strategy and competence that ought to be extraneous to the pitch-rating process.
Will developing a technology-backed framework for marking pitches mean pitches become homogenous across the international game, bleeding it of variety? No. The ball-tracking technology would simply establish a set of rigorous performance parameters a pitch would need to reach in order to be classified as "average", "good", "very good", and so on. It then becomes a question of the optimal way of achieving those in any given environment - which would also build knowledge about pitch preparation that could be hugely beneficial to the emerging cricketing nations, where such expertise is thinner on the ground.
A technology-backed pitch-ratings method would reduce cultural tensions
Of course, if sanctions for substandard surfaces impacted national teams (through the docking of WTC points), it would immediately remove the incentive for their boards to "request" egregiously advantage-seeking pitches whenever it became expedient - be that for sporting, political or other reasons.Less conspiratorially, developing a more precise, data-backed framework would increase the confidence of and in referees around what is often a politically charged issue. This might prove analogous to the introduction of neutral umpires (or even the DRS, which potentially obviates the need for match officials needing to be seen to be neutral).
And here is arguably the most important, though perhaps least tangible, benefit: The type of cultural tensions that crop up when pitch ratings are discussed - the defensiveness and suspicion, the accusations and denials - would be deprived of most of their oxygen. Sensitivities would be defused. This is not a trifling point in the age of social media, which have proven to be state-of-the-art antagonism machines. As the not-so-old joke has it, in a poll asking whether society had grown more divided, 50% said yes and 50% no.
An example of these simmering sensitivities being stirred came with the most recent pitch before Indore to pick up a demerit point: last December's Brisbane Test between Australia and South Africa, completed inside two days. Close observers were quick to point out the game's almost identical duration (especially the distribution of overs across the four innings) to the day-night Ahmedabad Test between India and England in February 2021.
Before the Gabba pitch had even been marked, the defensiveness and pre-emptive sense of grievance kicked in. Wasim Jaffer tweeted a meme comparing likely reactions to a two-day pitch in the SENA nations (South Africa, England, New Zealand, Australia) and the subcontinent, in essence implying that if that two-day Brisbane result had come on an Indian wicket, the cricket world would be up in arms. If social media is an animosity amplifier, Jaffer was perhaps equivalent to the populist leader using a straw man to roil up a sense of victimhood among his base (1.2 million Twitter followers now) - though the idea of victimhood is a somewhat quaint notion for Indian cricket in 2023.
Of course, the irony is that Brisbane was marked "below average" by Richie Richardson, with both sets of players and even the curator agreeing it was wholly merited, whereas that Ahmedabad pitch - the shortest Test since 1935, a surface on which Joe Root took 5 for 8 - was rated "average" by Javagal Srinath, standing as match referee due to Covid travel restrictions.
This is not to suggest anything improper from Srinath. After all, a year later he assigned a "below average" rating to the Bengaluru Test pitch, a day-night match that lasted 223.2 overs. It is simply to emphasise how, given the interpretative latitude baked into the ICC's pitch-ratings criteria, any referee's assessment of a pitch teetering between "average" and "below average" ratings might ultimately be a matter of perception, unconsciously influenced or conditioned by cultural background ("This isn't a turner, mate!"), a point on which Jaffer is inadvertently correct.
A further factor here is that, although the Gabba surface was overly damp to begin with and thus became pockmarked, producing variable bounce at speed as the surface baked, in general terms, pitches with excessive seam movement early in the game are not equivalent to those with excessive spin. In theory, the former can improve as the game develops. A pitch that is excessively dry and crumbling at the outset is not going to get any better. (Nevertheless, where a pitch has been prepared in rainy conditions and the curator is fully aware that it is overly damp to begin with, and thus fearful of a demerit, yet the umpires are keen to start the game in front of a full stadium, there would have to be some latitude in the referee's pitch rating to reflect this expediency.)
A more objective pitch-rating process would help prevent abuse of the system
One would hope that the ICC has a keen interest in tightening all this up, in using the resources that are already available. Because ultimately there could be far more on the line than defusing cultural sensitivities or preventing WTC chicanery. Relieving the potential pressure on referees to reach the "correct" verdicts in certain circumstances might be about protecting the pitch-ratings process from possible abuse or even corruption.Consider the following hypothetical scenario. A massive stadium named after a firebrand populist leader finds itself on four demerit points six months out from that country hosting an ICC tournament in which the stadium has been earmarked to host several games, including the final. Before then, however, the ground stages a marquee Test match and produces another slightly questionable surface, jeopardising its ICC accreditation. Given sport's utility as a vehicle for a regime's "soft power", the wider interest in the rating assigned to the pitch in these circumstances would be intense, the pressure on the match referee potentially overwhelming.
Or another hot-potato scenario, more economic in nature. A ground on one of the Caribbean islands sits on the precipice of suspension. It is hosting various games in the Under-19 World Cup, but in a few months' time will stage a Test match against England, with 10,000 Barmy Army members expected to visit. Should a fifth demerit point be accrued, the hit to the economy would be substantial. Again, one imagines local politicians would be unusually invested in the difference between a prospective "average" and "below average" pitch rating in one of those U-19 World Cup games.
Even if a match referee were impervious to whatever pressures might be exerted, as well as to any temptation to play safe (which surely increases every time a pitch verdict is overturned), a national board can always exercise its right of appeal and potentially bring its influence to bear. After all, if Pycroft can watch every ball of the Rawalpindi Test and have his considered judgement overruled by officials deducing the nature of the pitch from the scorecard, tail wagging dog, then why not roll the dice and appeal? If Broad, having seen a ball in the first over of a game he watched in its entirety explode through the surface and rag square, only to have his verdict overturned by administrators watching "footage" and deciding on that basis whether the variable bounce was acceptable or "excessive", then why not see if those wholly unscientific definitions can be stretched and bent a little more favourably?
Both Rawalpindi and Indore show that the pitch-ratings system urgently needs greater empirical heft and objectivity, not least to save match referees from being regularly thrown under the bus, but also to prevent a wider loss of credibility in the system. The ICC for its part says it is comfortable with the process that's in place, but does its executive really have the clout to change things for the better, even if they wanted to?
In the end, the barrier to reform may well be precisely what the Woolf Report identified in 2012: that the ICC executive is ultimately toothless in the face of the national boards, and the latter - notionally equal, though some clearly more equal than others - might not want change, whether it helps the game or not. It simply may not be in the interests of some powerful members to close off the possibility of a little pitch-doctoring, a little advantage-seeking skulduggery, particularly those with a surplus of international venues and the potential, therefore, to game the system.
In such circumstances, the canny, careerist member of the ICC executive may reckon that the smart move is to rock the boat as little as possible, to keep the big boys sweet, to take the path of least resistance. Without any real regulatory bite over bilateral cricket, the ICC effectively becomes what Gideon Haigh described as "an events management organisation that sends out ranking emails". And so inertia reigns and, as far as marking pitches is concerned, vagueness prevails, with the result that grievance festers and cricket, ultimately, loses.
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