Notes from the fifth Test
Rejecting no-balls, Crawley's foot, bad balls, Jadeja's control, Thakur blocking, Virat's spitting ball, Root's height and Bairstow watch.
Alex Lees and not rejecting the no-ball
Jasprit Bumrah delivered a no-ball in the first innings (there's been a lot of them, right) on what should have been the last ball of an over. Because it was a tight one, it took the third umpire a while to actually call it, which meant the field had changed, and Alex Lees was patting Zak Crawley on the bum mid-pitch.
Then the call came in, and everyone had to return to their spots and redo the last ball. Which of course then dismissed him.
https://twitter.com/NoahBrozinsky Noah Brozinsky suggested a while back to me that in Tests, facing an extra delivery after a no-ball should be optional. You look at the Jasprit Bumrah over to Ollie Robinson last summer as the perfect example of the fact England would have preferred not to have more balls.
Lees is a top-order player, and might have still taken it. But batters switch on and off, and once he touched Crawley's butt, he was not ready to face the next ball.
I think an excellent cricket rule is not to face extra Bumrah balls when you don't have to.
Jadeja's control
Even When Jadeja made runs early in his career there was a lack of control. He was a frantic athlete with incredible hand-eye coordination, but you wouldn't say he was a batter.
In some ways, he's still not. I thought he looked a little lost when he was thrust up the order in the Test at the Oval last year. And for his incredible average away from home, that was his first hundred. I have said many times before that like Imran Khan and Dan Vettori he has really mastered the art of not getting out.
But I really like just how in control he is of his batting skills at the moment. His leaves, the turns to the leg side, the manipulation of the spinners. His innings don't always progress in the way you would expect from a top-order batter, yet some of his individual skills and the way he knows his game is completely on that level.
Incredible this came from a bloke who appeared in Test cricket as almost a slogger when he began.
Bad balls
We are very close to the ICC having to do something about replacement balls in Tests. And by that, I mean, they probably should have looked into this two years back.
What is happening with the Dukes is a monumental embarrassment to the game. After 30 overs this once proud cricket item turns into a nerf ball.
For Dukes, this is something caused by Covid-related problems. And I am sure they are really looking forward to getting back to their old methods.
But the ICC is the real issue here. The most important part of our game is controlled by a bunch of small companies who barely make any money. To cricket fans, Kookaburra, Dukes and SG are big names, but they're not big brands. Kookaburra makes more money from hockey gear.
Compare this to football, where the World Cup balls are made by Adidas. Slazenger are the Wimbledon balls, again a larger company than any of the cricket ball manufacturers. And Wilson is the NBA maker of balls. So one thing they could do is have big company involved, even to buy out the ball departments of the existing makers.
Another is subsidising a manufacturer where you then control the product like what the MLB does.
Baseballs are made by Rawlings directly for the MLB.
This is probably the best idea for cricket, but in baseball it has not gone that well.
There have been all kinds of conspiracies about whether they change the weight or aerodynamics to get more (and sometimes less) home runs hit. But Rawlings also had trouble with baseballs during Covid. And then the MLB got caught lying about it. Years ago a Japanese baseball official was actually caught sending out juiced-up balls to ensure for more home runs.
This is what would probably happen in cricket.
But let's look at what's already occurring now. A small company that makes a quality product got hit by a global crisis and because of that we had a replacement ball be used for a single delivery. The ICC might as well have got a sponsor for their sphere cuffs, as they are out on the field more than anything else right now.
Pitches and balls should be regulated by the governing body of the sport. And instead, we have shit nerf balls.
But it's not even this series. Since reverse swing started happening less and the wobble ball took over, bowling teams are completely taking the piss by giving the ball to the umpire every time it doesn't veer sideways. You didn't do that with a ball you were trying to reverse because you'd put work into it. Bowlers just want a hard seam now.
Although this all got funnier, and weirder, when India replaced the ball on day two, and somehow got one back that was reversing.
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