Saturday, February 23, 2008

The buck does not stop

Steve Bucknor is nothing if not neutral – bat and pad are the same to him. You just had to see the first-ball dismissal of Mohammed Rafique off Morne Morkel (yes, Bangladesh and South Africa are playing out a test series, in case you care) to convince yourself of that. I’ve seen batsmen being given out lbw off a bat-pad, I’ve seen batsmen being given out lbw when the ball was either going too high or was missing the stumps, I’ve even seen batsmen being given lbw for being hit on other parts of the body, but Mohammed Rafique was perhaps the first to be given lbw for playing the ball with the bat – there was barely any pad in that defensive push of his. Well, ole’ Buck is just proving that those Sydney decisions were not malice-driven. Sigh!

3 comments:

Gaurav Sethi said...

Malice towards one and all asian teams, sums up Bucknor. Rafique must have had the most pained expression, considering it was a first ball duck!

straight point said...

batsmen will start fearing buckner (if not already) rather than bowler...

i donno why ICC is persisting with this blind and deaf man...

RamG R said...

Talking about Bucknor, his old friend, one Mr. Darrell Hair is officiating in the Under-19 World Cup. That's not fair (no racial slur, this)! Either you tell someone to either umpire or sit at home. You can't tell him to officiate in matches when nobody is watching!