England v Australia: Over Rates

[Occasional Fan]

As I promised to post this information earlier in the summer, I will do so, even though it is arguaby irrelevant in the case of a match in which a result is obtained.

Both England and Australia fell well short of the required over rate in this first test match, with Australia taking 4'40" per over and England 4'44". In a six and a half hour day, that would have England delivering 82 overs, robbing the paying public of eight, and Australia delivering 83 overs, which is hardly better.

I'll update this as the series progresses.

[Lemming]

I think both teams are as bad as each other. Ponting and Langer had to receive some medical attention on the first day, which would reduce number of overs. Also a lot of wickets have been falling throughout most of the match. If we scrapped drinks breaks we would get another 3-4 overs in per day!

[Rachael]

Originally Posted by Occasional Fan

In a six and a half hour day, that would have England delivering 82 overs, robbing the paying public of eight, and Australia delivering 83 overs, which is hardly better.

The concern is that sides basically cheat by rotating seam bowlers at a rate that allows them to recover fully between balls / overs / spells... thus denying the opposition the hard-earned right to face tired bowlers. You need, therefore, to look on a session by session basis...

Did Australia bowl especially slowly with the new ball to allow McGrath, Lee and Gillespie to rotate without needing to go to Warne? To do so would be blatant cheating and deserve immediate action... as it would be if Ponting took extra time out to set fields and react to Pietersen's onslaughts (denying the batsman the benefit of having successfully thrown the captain's plans into disarray).

More seriously.. did England slow things down when the game was being taken away from them in order to get through the day with the least damage done and in the hope of respite from rain?

If any of the above looks to have been the case then the captians should, of course, be suspended for the remainder of the series (pending a disciplinary hearing)... but if it's just general dawdling that's the problem (and the rates are more or less consistent throughout the match) then the rates are surely not so far behind the asking rate as to deserve severe censure.

I trust the captains are at least warned... and threatened with a ban... but would feel therre had been an over-reaction if Ponting or Vaughan received a multi-match ban simply on the basis of overall over rates.

[Rob.]

What needs kicking into touch is the amount of drinks breaks. I can understand them being needed in places like Sri Lanka where it is 40 degrees, but do we really need one drinks break every hour here in England? Consider the fact that fielders have drinks available to them on the boundary to have whenever, and batsmen can call one on at the end of every over. We don't neet an over rate slowing drinks break on top of that every hour.

[Lemming]

Originally Posted by Rachael

The concern is that sides basically cheat by rotating seam bowlers at a rate that allows them to recover fully between balls / overs / spells... thus denying the opposition the hard-earned right to face tired bowlers. You need, therefore, to look on a session by session basis...

It's not cheating to rest a bowler! Or to bring on another bowler for a spell when he is fresh.

It should be made to be cheating if you do not bowl 15 overs in an hour. No one in test cricket has a RIGHT to face tired bowlers!

[Rachael]

It's not cheating to take a bowler off to give him a rest.. but it IS cheating to bowl so slowly that your 3-4 seam bowlers can operate in their comfort zone: the West Indians did it frequently when I was a kid and to my mind they should be stripped of the Test wins in which they resorted to that tactic.

A batsman who can see off the first few spells deserves to get an easier ride as the bowlers tire... and a batting partnership that can screw up the opposition captain's field placings deserves to get the benefit of ill-thought-out adjustments instead of finding that the opposing team takes a time out for consultation with the bowler and senior players.

THAT is cheating.

ps. I don't mind HOW long a bowler's run up is.... but part of selecting a team is finding an attack in which the overall time spent walking to the boundary and charging in isn't excessive. If that means one bowler has to come in off a shortened run up and hurry through his overs then sobeit: there should be a PRICE for playing bowlers who don't get on with it!

[The Phantom Ram]

I had never though of it like this but I agree with what has been said. If a team pick only 4 bowlers and get the benefit of an extra batsman that is an advantage. If they do this by bowling slow enough to allow their bowlers to recover that is an unfair advantage. Some really good points that I had not thought of in this thread.

[Ninjaman]

Originally Posted by Rachael

It's not cheating to take a bowler off to give him a rest.. but it IS cheating to bowl so slowly that your 3-4 seam bowlers can operate in their comfort zone: the West Indians did it frequently when I was a kid and to my mind they should be stripped of the Test wins in which they resorted to that tactic.

Well thank God you are nowhere near to being in control of anything to do with cricket.

Could you tell me which regulations of cricket they were contravening??

Cheat is a strong word.

[Rachael]

Originally Posted by Ninjaman

Could you tell me which regulations of cricket they were contravening?? [...] Cheat is a strong word.

The regulations giving required over rates: the WI were routinely 2-3 overs an hour short. How much less effective would those pace quartets have been if they'd been forced to hurry more, had been given less time to recover and had several of the bowlers been asked to shorten their run-up?

The word "cheat" was used routinely when I was a kid... and unlike the so-called ball-tampering.. there was no lack of evidence: the officials were just too lilly livered to hand out the punishments such behaviour deserved.

[Ninjaman]

Originally Posted by Rachael

The regulations giving required over rates: the WI were routinely 2-3 overs an hour short. How much less effective would those pace quartets have been if they'd been forced to hurry more, had been given less time to recover and had several of the bowlers been asked to shorten their run-up?

How much more effective would Bodyline have been if the rules we play under now were in place??

The point being that the regulations with regards to over rates that we have now, were not in place when you were a child and the WI were winning.

Here's an excerpt from Wisden of 1991.

It will be interesting to see how the West Indians react to the [b]new ICC regulations concerning over-rates and short-pitched bowling, both of which have been integral to their game plan in their years at the top. They have not been so formidable in one-day cricket since the lawmakers clipped their wings.

Pretty much confirmation that over rate regulation was brought in directly to counteract one team: The West Indies.
[i]

Similar regret can be expressed about the need for a Code of Conduct, details of which appear in the ICC section of this Almanack.

The word "cheat" was used routinely when I was a kid... and unlike the so-called ball-tampering.. there was no lack of evidence: the officials were just too lilly livered to hand out the punishments such behaviour deserved.

The fact you used the word cheat is irrelevant and beside the point. The officials brought in regulations to combat such actions and since then the WI have been one of the least frequent offenders of those rules.

SO if a team uses tactics that any other team can replicate against them and those tactics are within the rules of the game, where do you get off calling them "cheats" and even more outrageously calling for a stripping of their Test victories.

Now ball tampering, that IS cheating!!