L.B.W. CRICKET LAW

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXXVIII, Issue 19959, 17 November 1934, Page 16

L.B.W. CRICKET LAW

AMENDMENT VALUELESS IN CRICKET The new English cricket season, to start in May, 193 h, is likely to see I the county clubs giving a trial lo the j amended l.b.w. law as an experiment, says an Australian writer. The weather [ is likely to influence this trial. On bad [ wickets, slow and medium paced | bowlers able to make the ball break j back should have a bounteous harvest |of victims. Good spin bowlers should I gather in greater numbers of wickets on true pitches. And the in-swinging fast and medium pace bowlers should ! get more wickets when the turf is true.

The altered law, applied to club cricket, may have serious effect, though one does not anticipate that change being made general in this first season. On hard wickets, in city and in provinces not of the turf variety in this country, an amendment of the law would have unhappy results. Whatever any) may be disclosed in the change for first-class cricket it has little to be commended In minor cricket, in which the bat does not dominate and the tendency of batsmen is to score with natural freedom.

There would not be much call for change in first-ciass cricket if captains shaped their tactics, and batsmen their methods, on match-winning, and re- ! garded the drawn game as valueless. : and undesirable. In England first-class batting in the general sense, is wanting | in freshness power, and colour. For I every rungetter of the type of C. F. Walters there are ten of the H. Sutcliffe type.

The laws which proved sound and j

generous to batsmen in the time W. G. Grace and Victor Trumper, of Ranjitsmhji, F. S. Jackson, A. C. MacLaren, and Clem Hill, ought to be | the laws fitted for cricket in all per- J iods. But apparently the laws have \ to be changed because the Barlows and Scottons of ancient times are much | more general in England now.