Some of cricket’s disputed laws have been debated to an unfinished finish, but it took one man in Sri Lanka’s Angelo Mathews to expose to a larger extent the absurdity of some laws that need to be scrapped or in the sport’s parlance, overturned.
That it took place at a World Cup would have been the last platform that the International Cricket Council (ICC) would have wished it did not happen when for the first time in the sport’s international history of 145 years a batsman, Angelo Mathews, was timed-out that is categorized among the 10 declared laws that can rule a player out.
The International Cricket Council or ICC has been reviewing and updating their laws to suit present day requirements but left a big door open by not abolishing the law that rules a player out because he took a few seconds from a sport that can take up a whole day or even span five days.
Umpires spend more time for their human failures and call for television replays that can consume five or ten minutes while players are given medical attention for a mishap during play sometimes sprawled on the ground.
Angelo Mathews had all the right in the world to take care of his safety and call for a spare helmet after the strap on the head gear he carried out gave way while being at his crease. Common sense took a terrible beating and it happened to a player who was battling off-field distractions to his career in the same way he had to battle the bowlers some of whom can send down balls at near bullet speed.
Mathews replaced his fellow team-mate Sadeera Samarawickrema who was caught in the outfield and what should be taken note of here is that with one ball or one delivery, two batters were dismissed making cricket the funniest gave for professionals of the world stage.
One of the newest rules brought in by the custodians of cricket is that the incoming new batsman has to face the subsequent ball and not the already-in batsman who until a year or two ago would have faced the subsequent ball having crossed while a catch was taken.
The new rule made Mathews, a sacrificial lamb and a victim of cricket’s laws of cruelty.
As for the captain of the Bangladesh team Shakib Al Hasan, there must be lot for him to learn about gamesmanship and fair-play in an age when nothing escapes the eye of the peer.
He showed no maturity and paid scant respect towards ethics if he knows what it means. He was the captain of a struggling team to whom winning meant everything in desperation.
It will never be known how many captains over the past century and a half refrained from appealing for such a damning dismissal without bowling a ball out of respect for their opponents and the unwritten rules of fair-play.
Could anyone have expected Shakib Al Hasan to be like the rest?
