Five conditions

Law 36 does not describe a dismissal. It lists five circumstances and says the striker is out if all of them apply. Miss one and the appeal fails, whichever four are met.

The five

One. "The bowler delivers a ball, not being a No ball." Two. The ball pitches "between wicket and wicket or on the off side of the striker's wicket". Three. "The ball not having previously touched his/her bat, the striker intercepts the ball" with some part of the person.

Four. The point of impact is between wicket and wicket, or, if the striker made no genuine attempt to play the ball with the bat, "between wicket and wicket or outside the line of the off stump". Five. "But for the interception, the ball would have hit the wicket."

What the second condition rules out

A ball that pitches outside leg stump cannot produce a leg before. Not if it would have hit middle. Not if the batter offered no stroke. The second condition is absolute: pitching on the leg side of the striker's wicket ends the question before the third and fourth are reached.

The off side is different. A ball may pitch anywhere on the off side of the wicket and still satisfy the second condition. The Law treats the two sides of the pitch differently at the point of pitching, and it does so without explanation. The asymmetry is simply stated.

The fourth condition and its exception

The fourth is where the argument lives. In its plain form, the impact must be between wicket and wicket: in line. But the clause adds an alternative. If the striker made no genuine attempt to play the ball with the bat, impact outside the line of the off stump also counts.

So a batter who pads up to a ball outside off, bat held away, can be out to a ball that would have hit the stumps. A batter who plays at the same ball and misses cannot.

The difference is not where the ball hit but what the batter was doing with the bat when it did. A genuine attempt is the umpire's to judge, and it is the only phrase in the five conditions that asks for a judgement of intent.

Three clarifications

Clause 36.2 adds three. Only the first interception counts: if the ball hits pad and then bat, the pad is the point of impact. If bat and pad are struck at the same time, the Law treats it as bat first, and there is no leg before. And the ball's path is assumed to continue as it was: the umpire judges where it would have gone on its line, not where it might have swung or spun after the interception.

The third of those is the one that makes the fifth condition answerable at all. "Would have hit the wicket" is a prediction, and the Law tells the umpire which prediction to make: the straight continuation. Not the deviation the bowler was hoping for, and not the one the batter fears.

What the Law asks the umpire to see

Five facts, one of them about the future. Where the ball pitched. Whether bat came first. Where the impact was, relative to the stumps. Whether the batter was trying to hit it. And where the ball would have gone. Four are observations and one is a projection, and the Law makes the projection a matter of continuing a line.

It is a dismissal built entirely of conditions, and the conditions are ordered. A no ball fails the first. A leg-side pitch fails the second. An inside edge fails the third. Everything else is the fourth and fifth, which is where the arguments are, and the Law has put the arguments in the two clauses that need an umpire's eye rather than a fact.

Law 36, Leg before wicket: MCC Laws of Cricket, 2017 Code →

••••••

No. 8 in By the Book, a series of 17.

NextRespect is central