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Aussie board gets tough on negative bowling

The Australian Cricket Board is being pretty busy, of late.

In separate sittings, the ACB examined the role of umpires, and of an enlarged role for technology in assisting umpires on the field of play.

As a consequence of the first, the ACB has decided to give umpires the right to penalise negative bowling.

The new powers will be first used during the 1998-'99 Ashes series against England.

Tony Crafter, head of the umpiring committee of the ACB, said board will adopt the recent recommendation of the International Cricket Council which permits umpires to call wides when bowlers bowl consistently outside leg stump.

"If someone fires a ball down the leg side, that's fine," said Crafter, himself a former umpire with 33 Test matches and 85 one-day internationals on his resume. "But if he continues to do so to a negative field or by targeting footmarks, he will be penalised."

The rule is intended to curb the tendency of bowlers adopting an outside the leg stump line in order to stop opposition batsmen scoring, as has been done often recently.

Umpires, however, will be allowed to use their interpretation, and will call after taking into account field settings, and tactics.

"It's not going to penalise someone like Shane Warne bowling into leg-side footmarks with an attacking field," Crafter said. "The rule is more to counter bowlers who might do it to slow a batsman down by bowling that line to a negative field."

The rule change has already been introduced in English county cricket.

Meanwhile the ACB, which again has been in the vanguard of introducing technology into cricket, is now examining new technology aimed at foolproofing LBW decisions.

Cameras and computers are to be harnessed towards this end, though implementation, even in the experimental stage, could be a further twelve months away.

Crafter said that despite the widespread reservations at increased use of technology, anything that ensured correct decisions was worth examining.

The system was first developed by South African sports scientist Tim Noakes, head of Sports Research at South Africa's Cape Town University.

The Noakes method puts one camera behind the batsman, and another beside him. By placing two cameras at right angles, umpires could establish the path and height of the delivery. A computer would then collect and collate the information, assessing precisely whether the ball would have hit the stumps after striking the batsman's pads.

The technology is still pretty embryonic, and Noakes has indicated that given sizeable funding, he could have it up and running in a matter of weeks.

One drawback though could be the time taken to make the decision. "While cricket is a stop-start sport, you can't have delays for too long," Crafter pointed out.

The ICC will consider the new technology at its next annual general meeting, in July 1999.

Both Australia and South Africa will be lobbying for the new technology. "If you can come up with the right decisions, it would take a lot of the aggro and heat out of those decisions," Crafter argued.

Crafter, along with fellow countryman and former skipper Bobby Simpson, is part of the Marlyebone Cricket Club panel that is now revising, and rewriting, cricket's laws. A complete revision is expected to be implemented by May 2000, the last such revision having occured in 1980.