Three minutes

Law 40 is short. It has three clauses and one number. After a wicket falls or a batter retires, the incoming batter must be ready to receive the ball, or the other batter must be ready to receive it, within three minutes. If not, the incoming batter is out, Timed out.

That is the whole of it. Nothing about why the batter was late. Nothing about whether the delay cost anybody anything. Three minutes from the dismissal or retirement, unless Time has been called.

What the clock starts on

The clause is exact about the start. It runs from "the dismissal or retirement", not from the moment the outgoing batter reaches the boundary and not from the moment the new one is called for. A slow walk off is on the incoming batter's clock.

It is exact about the end as well. Either batter being ready satisfies it. The Law does not require the new batter to take strike, only that somebody is in a position to receive the next ball. A batter who reaches the non-striker's end in time, while the partner takes guard, has met it.

The word the whole Law turns on is "ready", and the Law does not define it. Ready to receive the ball is not the same as at the crease, and it is not the same as having taken guard. The clause leaves that to the umpires, which is where most of the words in the Laws that matter end up.

Two phrases carry exemptions. "Unless Time has been called" means the clock does not run across an interval or the close: a wicket in the last over before lunch does not put the next batter on three minutes through the break. And "or the retirement of a batter" means a batter walking off hurt starts the same clock as a batter walking off dismissed.

The bowler does not get the wicket

Clause 40.2 is one sentence. "The bowler does not get credit for the wicket." It is a dismissal with no bowler, no fielder and no delivery. On a scorecard it sits in the batting column with a mode of dismissal and nothing on the other side of the ledger.

Bowled, caught, leg before, stumped, run out: each of those starts with a ball being bowled. Timed out happens between deliveries, and the fielding side has done nothing at all to bring it about. The wicket is a fact about the clock.

Where it hands over

The second clause deals with the case the first cannot. "In the event of an extended delay in which no batter comes to the wicket", the umpires go to Law 16.3, which is the Law on umpires awarding a match. That Law says a match "shall be lost by a side which concedes defeat or in the opinion of the umpires refuses to play". The three minutes become the starting point of that procedure.

So a Law about one batter being late is also, in its second sentence, a Law about a side refusing to play. How long an "extended delay" is, the text does not say. It gives the umpires a start time and leaves the rest to them.

Law 16.3 makes no distinction between a side that cannot produce a batter and a side that will not. Both are, in its words, a side that "refuses to play", and both lose the match. The Law on timed out does not ask which it is.

What is not in it

There is no allowance in the text for injury, for equipment, for the light, for a batter who was told the wrong order. The three minutes are three minutes. Whether an umpire would apply them to the letter is a different question from what the letter says.

What is also not in it is any instance. The Law does not record when it was last used, and this piece is about the text. It describes a dismissal the game found it necessary to write down and provide for in full, with an escalation clause behind it, and it does so in three clauses.

Law 40, Timed out: MCC Laws of Cricket, 2017 Code →

Law 16, The result: MCC Laws of Cricket, 2017 Code →

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No. 1 in By the Book, a series of 17.

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