THE CRACKDOWN
Umpires will now be able to show red for violence
Umpires are to be handed the power to brandish red cards and dismiss any player guilty of physical violence in a significant crackdown on bad behaviour in cricket.
so concerned are mCC, guardians of the game’s laws, with growing incidents of violence — particularly at lower levels of the game — that they plan to provide officials with a major deterrent in an attempt to cut out extreme behaviour.
mCC’s influential World Cricket committee yesterday announced the move at the end of their two-day meeting ahead of the fourth Test here in mumbai, and it is set to be brought in to all cricket next October, just in time for the Ashes.
But mCC resisted the temptation to go the whole hog and introduce yellow cards and a sin-bin for verbal abuse and dissent, believing there needs to be more discussion on how best to implement ‘cautions’.
The committee, chaired by mike Brearley and including top former players such as ricky ponting, sourav Ganguly and Brendon mcCullum, also want to limit the size of bats and push for Twenty20 cricket to be included in the Olympics.
But it is the introduction of sending-offs that is the most emotive of the recommendations which will now go before the full mCC committee, who are expected to rubber-stamp them and make them part of cricketing law.
‘This is to cover the most extreme cases of violence on the pitch,’ said former england captain Brearley, who led the meeting. ‘We had a survey of umpires and 40 per cent said they’d considered giving up because of abuse, and anecdotal evidence from league cricket is that behaviour has got a lot worse.’
Only if players resort to physical violence with umpires or an opponent will the move ever be seen in international cricket, with the infamous incident in 1981 involving Dennis Lillee and Javed miandad a prime example.
‘He (Lillee) kicked him, so that probably is one incident where this would have been applied,’ said former Australia captain ponting, who led yesterday’s announcement on a panel alongside Brearley, pakistan’s ramiz raja and mCC’s head of cricket John stephenson.
‘if the umpire had been courageous enough to get his red card out after that then great, but i can’t think of any other incident when someone would have been sent off in Test cricket. it’s not the international game we’re worried about.’