Laws give Mankad back his good name at last
Adam Collins is thrilled to note that one of cricket’s great anomalies has been addressed by the law-makers
This was the reaction of commentator Michael Holding when Sri Lanka’s Sachithra Senanayake ran out England’s Jos Buttler in a 2014 ODI.
The batsman? Out of his crease when the bails were broken. The ball? Live. “I’m not sure about that one,” Whispering Death reiterated. Why? Because the fielder was also the bowler, and the batsman was the non-striker. Cue: all hell breaking loose. It always does. To an extent, it is an understandable response considering how little is known about the provision for a non-striker to be dismissed when gaining an improper advantage by leaving their crease early. That is, after all, what this is.
But, mercifully, the little blue book – the MCC’s laws of the game – has this month been updated in a way that should start to unclutter the complexity of the dismissal. And help keep batsmen where they should be.
“It was pretty disappointing, to be honest with you and pretty poor so you’ll have to ask Angelo (Mathews) why he did it,” were Alastair Cook’s words at the time of the Buttler dismissal.
Ironically, the former England skipper is partially responsible for the chain reaction leading to this latest change. An unintended consequence of no-balls being checked by the TV umpire showed Cook routinely well out of his ground before he should have been. The internet noticed, and the ICC’s professional conditions were modified in 2011.
But in the recast MCC code, the new and improved law 41.16 has been amended for the millions of cricketers who play outside of elite stadiums. In basic terms, it allows for the stumps to be broken until the point where the bowler can realistically be expected to deliver.
By contrast, until October, once a bowler had landed their back foot to enter the delivery stride the batsman was free to frolic. Not now, regardless of whether the games have TV cameras scrutinising them or not.
“People said it is against the spirit of cricket and we say not really because if it is against the spirit of cricket then why is it in the laws?” This the measured take of Fraser Stewart, Manager of Laws for the MCC, who discussed the change with The Cricket Paper. He spent the last three years in an exhaustive drafting and consultation process across the game – the first wholesale update since the year 2000 and only the fourth since the Second World War. “The laws allow it and have to have it. There was quite a strong hard-line take on this from the World Committee.”
Stewart explained the importance of what the bowler cannot do. Namely, hold onto the ball, pretend to deliver, then catch the batsman unawares.
That’s not on “because the non-striker would have a reasonable expectation that he let it go when he got to the top of the swing,” he said. The intent is also found in the name. “It was a subtle change we made where under the previous code it was ‘bowler attempting to run out the non-striker before delivery’ and we changed it to ‘nonstriker leaving his or her ground early’.’’
The importance of creating a healthier culture around this was reinforced last year when Sri Lanka conceded 14 in the final over of an ODI to tie against England. Throughout that final act, nonstriker Liam Plunkett was shown by cameras to be a foot or more out of his crease when deliveries were sent down. Sure, the bowler was entitled to whip off the bails, but did not do so.
Had he done so, they would have won the opening match of that series. “It is a very emotive law,” Stewart continued. “But it is an entirely necessary law because if it is not there, the non-striker would just back up and be four yards down the pitch.”
Always complicating matters is the first international incident of the dismissal in 1947. Then, Indian Vinoo Mankad flicked off the bails when Australian batsman Bill Brown went wandering. This occurred in a tour game, then in the SCG Test later that summer. Mankad warned Brown first before going ahead with it. Not because he had to – he just did. The dismissal has colloquially carried the spinner’s name ever since.
But nomenclature aside (the MCC purposely keep Mankad out of their law), the more problematic legacy of the episode is the fallacy that a warning has to precede an attempt at the run-out. This has never featured in the laws, yet it has deeply seeped into the discourse around the act.
As the MCC have concluded, a warning is completely impractical. “People would get around that by stopping at the first ball of the innings to say ‘right, there is your warning’ for the rest of the innings,” Stewart noted. Not to mention the flawed thinking that for this dismissal alone, batsmen deserve two chances to slip up.
An acute example of how problematic this quasi-convention is was seen at the 1987 World Cup when it essentially denied the West Indies a spot in the semi-final. With Pakistan chasing and nine down, Courtney Walsh spotted Saleem Jaffar scampering down the wicket before he bowled but warned him instead of claiming his wicket. They lost. His countrymen made the opposite call 29 years later, bowler Keemo Paul finding the final Zimbabwe batsman out of his ground in a similar final-over scrap at the U19s World Cup. They went on to win the title. Amid the usual howls, the action was fully supported as lawful by the MCC.
Whether it is the perceived lack of sportsmanship, the predestined blowback or simply the case that bowlers aren’t conditioned to it, there have been only four successful attempts in Tests since Mankad (none for 40 years), and just five in ODIs.
The single instance of it happening in T20 internationals belongs to a match between Oman and Hong Kong. Instructive, Stewart believes, for it suggests a difference in attitudes between bigger cricket nations and associates.
For the latter, they see the rules and play to them accordingly.
So maybe, through the newcomers, we can also see that it isn’t that complicated?
“If you are a non-striker and you are Mankaded it’ll only happen once,” Stewart concludes. “The bowler has been cast as the villain for too long. And the onus is fully on the non-striker to stay in their ground. If they do that, there won’t be a problem.”
Hear, hear.
“Oh, I’m not too sure that the captain will allow him to appeal for that.” The bowler has been cast as the villain for too long and the onus is fully on the non-striker to stay in their ground