Gayle beyond the boundary
By Hubert Williams
Guyana Chronicle
March 20, 2007
BRIDGETOWN, Barbados -- There have been a number of responses to the points made in my article ‘Ball Beyond the Boundary’, all but one laudatory, and some intrigued by what was described as the uniqueness of several of the points made.
The discussion referred to an incident during the West Indies/Pakistan opening match at Sabina Park, Jamaica, in World Cup 2007 on Tuesday, March 13, where Chris Gayle, in preventing the ball from reaching the boundary, touched the rope with the toe of his right boot and the Third Umpire, on the basis of several television replays, adjudged it to be a four.
Commentator Tony Cozier, on the television coverage, disagreed with the umpire’s decision and said that in circumstances such as occurred with Gayle’s piece of fielding, a boundary should not be awarded, and the relevant rule should be so amended.
The presumption in my article was that if any part of the body touched the rope, it was as though the ball had touched the rope and this contention was extended to the propriety or ‘legality’ of catches ‘cupped’ by wicketkeepers and fielders where the gloves or bare hands were touching the ground.
Thus, the questions which arose were:
* When is a four a four?
* When is a catch a catch?
* Is the batsman’s glove a part of the bat?
* Is the wicketkeeper’s glove a part of the ball?
* Is the fielder’s body a part of the turf?
However, the lone dissent, and he may well have provided the correct explanation, came from Peter Webster, agriculturalist, former manager at the Caribbean Development Bank, and cricket enthusiast.
He felt the flaw in the article was its concentration on the ‘ball’ when it should properly have been on Gayle (the fieldsman).
Mr. Webster’s theory was that by his boot touching the boundary rope, as the television replays clearly showed, Gayle had technically put himself off the field of play, in other words, ‘beyond the boundary’, and having done so he could not then have prevented the ‘four’.
Here follows the text of Mr. Webster’s intervention: “You make a good argument from one point of view, but like everything else there is another side to that particular coin. The other side relates to whether the fielder is on the field of play or outside. A fielder cannot catch a ball while standing outside the field of play, nor is he allowed to stop a ball while outside the field of play.
“The real issue is how we define a fielder on the field or out, and the definition must be clear and unambiguous and easy to determine. I can imagine the plethora of arguments that would arise with any other definition than the current one where once a fielder is touching the rope he is outside of play.”
To widen the comparison, it would have been as if the 12th man, with bottled water in one hand and a towel over his shoulder, had stepped onto the field of play and stopped a ball which was approaching the rope – still a four.
Or a spectator, as we have seen so often, especially youngsters, running across the rope to field a certain four; or when between one and four runs were required for victory and a delivery is whacked toward the boundary, spectators storm across the rope well before the ball reached – some wishing to have the ball as souvenir – but no one ever doubts its validity as a boundary to seal the match.
Some responders thought the issue raised about wicketkeepers’ gloves and fielders’ hands touching the ground in effecting catches was unique, but a hornets’ nest which would be best if left undisturbed.