LBW RULE

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22827, 11 March 1936, Page 13

LBW RULE

FULL TRIAL NEEDED APPEAL TO CLUBS. (From Our Own Correspondent) , (By Air Mail) LONDON, February 8. Sir Stanley Jackson, who presided at the annual meeting of the Yorkshire County Cricket Club, referred to the alteration in the Ibw rule, and said that New Zealand had fallen in with the request of M.C.C. to give the new rule a trial. It was now suggested, he added, that the experiment should receive a trial in all classes of cricket. It might be contended, he said, that there was a difference between county grounds and first-class umpires and the natural wickets and “ natural ” umpires in the lower grades. He admitted that the new rule would increase the difficulties and powers of the umpire in junior cricket, but he did not think that its adoption would spoil the game. He appealed to all clubs to fall in with the suggestion of M.C.C. Already, he said, a large number of clubs and leagues in Yorkshire were prepared to adopt the suggestion. 1 LITTLE OR NO DIFFICULTY. Mr R. C. Kobertson-Glasgow, writing to the Morning Post, says:— "Sir Stanley Jackson, speaking for Lord Hawke, has propounded views on the new Ibw rule that must now be shared by the vast majority of cricketers. There were some of us who were diffident of the success of the new rule before it came into operation. We were proved to bo entirely wrong. How far it has altered (he technique of batting in first-class cricket must be a matter of debate. Some of our leading players were seriously worried by it, and showed their worry when at the wicket. Others —the more natural and orthodox batsmen—were not in the least affected. But, in general, the new rule falsified our fears. The umpires found little or no difficulty in applying it. Just a few remarked that it was hard to tell whether a ball that spun or swerved from the off would, if not interrupted by pad or person, have missed the leg slump. But the nature of this. difficulty is already inherent in the original rule. UNIVERSAL APPLIGATION. “ Far more important than the merely technical side of the question is the necessity for its application to become universal. That it will do so in a few years seems at the moment to be most probable. Club and village cricketers are rightly and notoriously conservative. Already. in many instances, they have their own Ibw rules—at each end. “But I think that they should trust the wisdom of cricket’s lawgivers. Once they have tried it they will almost certainly like it. And it is an anomaly that a club batsman, on the fringe of firstclass honours, should have to pass suddenly, on, perhaps the most critical day of his cricketing life, from the obsolete to the new.”