By the Book
The Laws of Cricket, one clause at a time.
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2017
Three minutes
Law 40 gives an incoming batter three minutes to be ready. It is the dismissal in which the bowler takes no wicket and the batter has faced no ball.
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2017
The bat that bounces
Law 30 says where a batter’s ground is. Its second clause says a batter who has made it can lose it and still be in, and that clause decides run-outs that come down to whether a bat bounced.
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2017
Four levels
Law 42 grades misconduct on the field in four levels and prices each one. The fourth removes a player for the rest of the match, and the side plays on a fielder short.
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2017
The highest point of the arm
Law 38.3 lets a bowler run out a non-striker who leaves early. The window closes at the instant the bowler’s arm would normally reach the top of its swing, and after that the clause cannot touch them.
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2017
Four and a quarter inches
Law 5 fixes the bat in a list of numbers. Width, depth, edge and length are limits, the handle is a proportion, and weight is not among them.
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2017
At the instant of the throw
Law 19 decides a boundary by where a fielder is grounded, and prices an overthrow by where the batters were at the instant the ball left the fielder’s hand. One World Cup final turned on the second half.
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2017
By word or action
Law 37 makes a batter out for wilfully trying to obstruct or distract the fielding side. It also contains, in its second clause, the striker who stops the ball with the hand not holding the bat.
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2017
Five conditions
Law 36 makes leg before wicket a test of five conditions, all of which must hold. The one people argue about is the fourth, and it is the only one with an exception written into it.
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2017
Respect is central
Before Law 1 there is a Preamble. It puts the major responsibility for fair play on the captains, lists seven things under one word, and has no clause to cite and no penalty to apply.
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2017
Neither batter shall be out
Law 21 lists the ways a delivery fails. Its last clause says that off any of them neither batter can be out, except in three ways that are all the batter’s own doing.
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2017
Complete control
Law 33 says a catch ends when the fielder has complete control over the ball and over their own movement. Until that moment the batter is not out, the runs are still being run, and the boundary still counts.
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2017
Penalty time
Law 24 lets a side replace an absent fielder, and then spends most of its clauses on what the replacement may not do and on what the absentee owes on return.
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2017
Before the toss
Law 1 says each captain nominates the eleven in writing before the toss, and nobody may be replaced afterwards without the other captain’s consent. Two pieces on this site about Nagpur in 2004 turn on that clause.
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2017
Sole judges
Law 2 gives the umpires one sentence of authority and then spends the rest of its clauses saying which decisions need both of them, which need one, and which cannot be undone.
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2017
A tie is a result
Law 16 lists the ways a match ends and puts a tie among the results, not among the draws. It also says when the match is over, to the ball, and when the result can no longer be changed.
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2017
The crease inside the pitch
Law 6 makes the pitch 22 yards long and ends it at the bowling creases. Law 7 puts the popping crease four feet inside that. Read together, the line a batter stands on is not at the end of the pitch, and most diagrams draw it there.
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1979
Four balls with an aluminium bat
The Perth card of December 1979 carries a note that Dennis Lillee faced four balls from Ian Botham with an aluminium bat, scored three, and that ten minutes were lost while the umpire persuaded him to change it. Nothing in the Laws then said he had to. Law 5 now has one sentence that would have ended it in a second.