Saturday 11 May 2013

Is cricket unfair to Bowler?

I heard the discussion how cricket is unfair to the bowler. How a bowler can bowl a specific number of overs, where as a batsman does not have any restriction. How umpires give benefit of doubt to the batsman to fielding restriction and free hit all of the new laws favoring the batsman. The above statements are true but are part of the half of the story. There is another half of the story where batsman does not have the advantages like a bowler 1) A batsman can only commit a mistake once. Say a bowler bowled a bad ball or no ball. He can be hit for a 6. But he will be given chance to correct his mistake and come back. But a batsman gets out with a wrong shot, he won't get any chance in the match again. 2)Bowling captain has the choice. Let us say we have 11 batsman bt1 to bt11 where as you have 11 bowlers bw1 to bw11. Bating side captain has to send batsman and let the fielding side know who is batting. Fielding side captain makes the choice of field positions and bowler knowing who is batting. How about turning this around and say, hey fielding side, you can make any bowler bowl for any length, but we will decide who will bat you for this over based on your bowler and field placement. 3) No bowler gets punished for obstructing the field. Hey a batsman can get out for obstructing the field, but bowler gets unpunished. Nobody says a player can't bowl further in the match (eqv to getting out by batsman) because he was obstructing the field. At best it bowler goes away with some runs or warning from umpire) 4) Run out is against batsman. I hate the run out where bowler has done nothing significant than touching the ball directly hit by the batsman and the ball removing the stumps and getting batsman out. Commentators call it unfortunate, but I call it criminal and law against batsman. 5) Run outs where the batsman has made the run. It can be the run outs where the batsman has made the run dived and give his best effort. But third umpires check whether his bat is in air or touching the ground when the stumps are taken away. So it is not a comparison between who has made it sooner. Whether the batsman reached first or bowler/wicket keeper removed stumps first. But what happened at the moment when the stumps are removed 6) Again run out: What about run outs where batsman was made the run but pushed by fielding side unintentionally. I don't want to punish the bowler/wicket keeper who was trying to get the ball and pushed the batsman. But why will batsman be given out for some mistake that is not his own? Why should it be left to captain and spirit of play instead of bring it to the law?

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