Back in November, there was a joke doing the rounds. Brendon McCullum, it went, walks into a bar, and the barman asks: “Why the long face?” Boom, tish.
The gag came on the back of the day-night Test between Australia and New Zealand in Adelaide, which was eventually won by the home side.
But at a time when New Zealand had Australia on the ropes at 188 for eight, the third umpire, Nigel Llong, reviewing a not-out decision for a catch against Nathan Lyon, decided there was no case to answer despite a clear HotSpot mark on the bat (and, as was subsequently demonstrated, a pink one left by the ball).
To compound matters, the wrong delivery was replayed when the Virtual Eye tracking was invoked to check for lbw as an alternative. So it is just possible the Kiwis were on the wrong end of a double whammy. Under the circumstances, given the impact at the time and the outcome of the match, they remained remarkably sanguine.
Then last week, against the same opposition at the Basin Reserve in Wellington, they caught the rough end again. Adam Voges had made seven when he shouldered arms to Doug Bracewell, delivering the final over of the first day, and was bowled.
It would have left Australia at 146 for four overnight, in reply to New Zealand’s 183. However, the onfield umpire Richard Illingworth, bucking the trend these days, had called no-ball.
Voges survived, went on to make a further 232 runs, and Australia won the match comfortably by an innings and 52 runs with a day to spare.
Illingworth, though, had been erroneous in his judgment: replays showed that a significant portion of the bowler’s heel was behind the line.
Herein lies a flaw in the decision-making process. Umpires have been criticised heavily over the past few years for not calling what might be seen as tight no-balls. The reasons for this though are two-fold.
Firstly, particularly and understandably when it comes to white-ball cricket, they tend to stand further back than perhaps in the past, simply to avoid injury from some of the power hitting seen these days. The consequent angle inevitably makes almost impossible judgment in what has now become a factor of millimetres, to a painted line often distorted by bowlers footmarks, and when sometimes the heel is raised anyway. There are occasions too when the bowler’s trailing foot obscures vision.
Secondly, although there is the protocol for overturning a decision in which a wicket has fallen to what is subsequently shown by replay to be a no-ball, there is none to deal with the reverse situation that involved Voges and Bracewell.
Umpires therefore are reluctant to make close line-calls precisely because they cannot be rectified if wrong.
“Credit to Voges,” said McCullum after the match, “for making it count.” Illingworth was to repeat the error later in the match, although no damage was done, and is apparently distraught, although it is scarcely his fault for giving it a go.
It is easy to say that cricket has always contained an element of “rub of the green”. But this makes no allowance for the intense scrutiny under which the game is played and conducted these days. So somehow, particularly for international cricket which is played under a televisual microscope, the way in which the no-ball law is applied, and indeed the law itself, needs attention.
One obvious thing would be at the very least for the third umpire to check all “wickets” that have resulted from no-balls and have the power to overturn (do not be seduced by the argument that batsmen are distracted by a no-ball call, any more than they are put off by bowler’s disturbing the stumps at the non-striker’s end).
There is no excuse for an incident such as that with Voges. An extension of that would be for the third umpire to make all line calls, as continually proposed, most recently by McCullum, although that would seem cumbersome, and simply adhering to the first point might make umpires more ready to commit to close line-calls.
Apparently, Darren Lehmann thinks that the square leg umpire could do the calling, although how he thinks an official more than 25 yards away at an oblique angle can make a better judgment than his colleague at the bowler’s end makes little sense.
Hence I think both the playing conditions and the law itself need a change. In the latter case, it has always seemed wholly absurd that the bowler is given another crack at the batsman with an extra delivery, on the back of a transgression. Fast bowlers in the past frequently took advantage of this by “going through the crease” to soften up a tailender knowing they had deliveries in hand.
Why, in an extreme example, should the last batsman, facing the final delivery to draw a match, be compelled to face yet another if the bowler no-balls?
So either give the batting side the option of forgoing the extra delivery (and with it the runs) or of taking those runs that accrue and facing it. Alternatively, just make the extra delivery a free-hit in any case so that no wicket can result from it.
But I would also increase the penalty for no-balling to something more stringent, say four or even six runs. As with the debate about Mankading, the simple solution to the no-ball debate is for bowlers to stay behind the line. Hammer them, and the team, if they over-step and they will soon stop.