A batsman's game...

After another disappointing weekend, the season is not quite turning out how we had planned. In situations like this, it is important to keep our heads, go back to basics and focus on doing the simple things right.

One of our biggest problems at the moment seems to be that, as a side, we are just not batting well enough. All this comes despite Jimmy Adams claim on Saturday night to me that ‘it is, and always has been, a batsman game’.

It is an interesting accusation, and one that I feel needs more exploration. Yes, this may seem like a bowlers moan, and given this argument has come from Jimmy, there is no better person at moaning. However, there are some valid points to be made.

Firstly, I am going to look at the laws of the game. In league cricket now, it is common place for the rules to state that any ball down the leg side is a wide. Yet why is this the case? All this rule does is take away a perfectly effective line of attack. The actually law as written by the MCC states “The ball will be considered as passing wide of the striker unless it is sufficiently within his reach for him to be able to hit it with his bat by means of a normal cricket stroke.”  There is nothing within that saying we want batsmen to only be able to score on the offside or the bowler must bowl to the batsmen’s strengths, so why do we now meddle in the laws? Yes, it does provide consistency of decision, but surely we can trust our umpires to decide what is a wide or not. In addition, with the advent of switch hitting, and the batsman’s ‘right’ to effectively change what is the leg side and off side, it could be argued such laws are now just outdated.

The same logic applies to regulations on how many fielders you can have on the leg side. Why are we limited to 5? If a batsman is hell bent on swiping the ball to leg, why can’t I set a field which says to him ‘hit me in the off side son’.

Jimmy’s main gripe was one I had never actually considered. Currently, the bowler is reprimanded for running on the pitch. Fielders are told to avoid the pitch. Yet the batsman, the apple of the umpires eye, is permitted to wander down, pick up any loose bits of turf he or she wants to discard, prod down any protruding parts of the pitch that might invoke some uneven bounce, and just generally alter the condition of the surface. What right does he have to do this over the bowler? Never mind the ‘accidental’ running down the middle of the wicket in the last ten overs of the innings!

A batsman out 'gardening'

Finally, I would just like a quick word on technology. Since arriving at Kimberley, I always knew the ‘cozy’ boundaries would prove a challenge to a slow bowler. As a spinner, you don’t mind having short boundaries provided that when you do deceive the batsmen, you get as much value as when the batsmen hits you cleanly. Unfortunately, nowadays, with modern bats, even the clothed hits can find their way to the boundaries for six. So while bat technology has moved on, the ball has remained ever the same.

All in all, we know that people come to watch batmsen not bowlers, but we need to be careful that as batting techniques and equipment continue to improve, the ‘equal’ partners in our great game don’t get too rough a deal.