LEFT ARM OVER
NEIL MANTHORP: No logic and many food breaks in a week of bizarre decisions
Common sense and logic have always had a fraught relationship with cricket. It goes back centuries, probably starting when underarm bowling was replaced by "roundarm" bowling in the 1850s with the stipulation that the "hand should not be above shoulder height at the point of delivery". Exactly. The latest addition to a long and rich history of the banal and bizarre came with umpire Aleem Dar’s insistence that the teams left the field for lunch with India just two runs short of victory in the second ODI in Centurion on Sunday. Virat Kohli even pleaded with the senior official to allow one more over, but he was adamant. Rules are rules. Strangers to the game find it endlessly curious in the same way that watching animals drunk on fermented marula fruit is compelling. Both keep stumbling over themselves. "So, the ball has to be hitting the wicket a lot for the video official to give it out, right? Hitting just the side of the wicket isn’t good enough?" My Canadian friend loves it. Oops...
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