Danger ahead as batsmen cut loose with lethal weaponsIt is time to legislate. Before someone is seriously injured, not afterwards. The cricket ball is being hit ever harder, by increasingly powerful batsmen with increasingly powerful bats, and somebody soon will be on the receiving end, perhaps fatally.
It could be the umpire. “We’ve been talking about how to protect yourself,” Rob Bailey said, “especially when you are standing up to the stumps for a spinner.” John Steele, another county stalwart turned first-class umpire, says he wears a box – for umpiring.
It could be the bowler who gets badly hurt, especially if he drops his head after delivery. Mark Robinson, Sussex’s coach, was hit flush on the head when bowling for Northamptonshire and Glamorgan’s Matthew Maynard came down the pitch, reducing Robinson’s reaction time.
In the Indian Premier League yesterday, Johan Botha was bowling his off-spin for Rajasthan Royals and Manoj Tiwary was batting for Kolkata Knight Riders. It wasn’t a particularly strong straight-drive – it did not go for four, let alone six – but Botha just ducked and put his hands up in self-defence.
Botha is fairly fit, not like some of the IPL pensioners. A South African, he has just been appointed captain of South Australia, so he is no has-been. And if he hasn’t time to react, what chance does a senior umpire have to leap out of the ball’s path?
But one of the worst injuries caused so far by a batsman was to a non-striker. Jos Buttler was batting for Somerset in the Champions League T20 last autumn in India when he launched a ball from James Franklin straight at his partner, Craig Kieswetter, backing up. The non-striker was struck decidedly hard.
Kieswetter takes up the story. “It hit me on the
forearm and was about two inches from shattering my elbow. I had a bruise for a month and felt it throughout the England one-day series [against India that followed] — and I stopped the ball going for four.”
Kieswetter distinguishes between various forms of backing up and therefore the degree of risk in being hit by a return drive. “We needed about 26 off three overs and had decided to run for everything except byes to the keeper.” Obviously on a slow day in a championship game, the non-striker does not back up so far.
As you cannot stop batsmen doing weights in the gym all winter, the way to reduce the danger is to legislate and reduce the bat’s power.
It was in 1771 that the width of the bat was limited to 4¼in. In 1835 the length of the bat was limited to 38in. MCC would have made it a nice and sensible progression if in the 1900s they had legislated on the bat’s thickness. But their lawmakers were dormant, although the eminent former cricket correspondent of The Times, John Woodcock, lobbied hard when he was an MCC committee man.
The bat’s traditional thickness was between the size of a fingernail and a thumbnail. Anything thicker and a bat would become too heavy and unwieldy.
Bats now can be thicker than 1½in at the edge, and up to 2½in thick in the middle. Yet very few of today’s bats weigh as much as 3lb. There is so much wood in them, and they can break more easily, but they are barely heavier than the traditional blade.
It would be good for the aesthetics of the game – as well as the health of umpire, non-striker and bowler – if the bat’s thickness were limited to one inch.
It gets boring in Twenty20 when every other ball disappears; and it is wrong for a batsman to get four runs for a forward push, without any follow-through. Variety is being lost as the drive, including the thick edge for six, becomes too prevalent, while the late cut has disappeared.
On motorways we are told to keep two chevrons apart. When a batman comes down the pitch and hits the ball back faster than 70mph, in a T20 game under dodgy lights, he is less than a chevron away. It’s time for legislators to react, to give others time to react.