Tuesday, May 25, 2010

WIDE BALL wide ball

I have been following cricket for around 2 decades and I came across various rules of cricket. Few were easy to understand, few were not. But one thing, I am not able to understand is the differences  between the wide balls! That's the subject of this post, in fact a question to all of you regarding this. Why there is difference in lengths of wide balls?

Now, let me elaborate the question a bit more. 

Case 1:
One Day Internationals or T20 matches- Wide ball difference in leg stump & off stump of a batsman:
When ball goes just outside of the leg stump, the umpire signals wide. On the other hand even if the ball is wider to off side, than considered previously to the leg side, it is not signaled as wide.

Case 2:
Wide ball in Test Match:
Here, may it be leg stump or off stump, the umpire does not signal a wide ball as often as he does in ODIs or T20s. Further, there again exists a difference between wide ball given to the leg side of the batsman and off side.

Case 3:
Above the shoulder (or head?) Height:
In this case, if the ball is traveling over the head, then it is been signaled as wide. There also, the rules confuse me between the 1st ball over the shoulder and the next.

What I can think logically is, wide ball rule must have been made so that a bowler bowls a delivery in the area which is approachable to the batsman. And if he bowls outside of that predetermined area, then it is a wide ball. Then, my doubt is simple. Why there is difference in lengths of a wide ball: (1) To off side & leg side of a batsman; (2) In Test match and ODI/ T20 match.

And a sub-question, you can say,  is why batsman with shorter height and shorter arm length has the same wide-ball-length as that of a batsman with more height and more arm length? By above logic, though theoretically, each different person will have different approachable area and hence different wide ball length! I want answers, friends, I want answers!

You can e-mail this questions to the people who you think can answer for us. Just follow simple email procedure by clicking on Email symbol.

4 comments:

  1. there are lines on the pitch for wide ball. rule is that if u bowl outside those lines it would be a wide ball. now this rule is upheld in tests. but in odi cricket this will encourage a lot of negative bowling, and to avoid that we have strict leg side wides in odi

    ReplyDelete
  2. i agree with the above comment that wide ball rule is formulated to prevent the negative bowling..and i think the distance is fixed considering the tall men too..bcoz its quite far from the reach of even tall batsmen

    ReplyDelete
  3. what is the distance lenght of off side wide ball in odi nd t20? how much centimeters or inches?

    ReplyDelete
  4. I have a query that what if the batsmen plays the wide ball outside the leg stump and the ball goes from between his bat and pad.Is it a lega delivery or not?

    ReplyDelete