More to do with run chases, but Jarod Kimber made an excellent point tonight on Talksport about it - even if he unwittingly got the wording wrong.
He spoke of a ‘sacrifice bunt’ to describe the act of a tailender (with an ‘in batsman’ at the non strikers end) taking a wild swing at a ball during a run chase which they consider a freebie in the sense that aslong as they make contact, they’ll get a desired outcome of either a boundary, a single OR caught but with the benefit of the batsmen crossing.
What he should’ve called it was a ‘sacrifice fly’
They’re baseball terms, but a bunt goes along the ground and runners already on base can advance whilst the ball is fielded, whereas a ‘fly’ is a ball which hangs in the air and is caught in the deep whilst the runners on the bases can advance whilst the ball is fielded.
With the new rules, I predict that we’ll simply get a load of sacrifice bunts to replace the sacrifice fly. The non striking batsman will just start running as the ball is bowled and so any contact with the bat will be enough to see him make his ground, it won’t necessarily matter if the tailender gets ran out.
Which segways nicely into the mankad rule really. Which I’m really not a fan of at all. It just doesn’t sit right with me. However, I get that bowlers/fielders want to restrict the batsman from gaining an unfair advantage - my proposal would simply be that if a batsman leaves their ground before a ball is bowled, the umpire should call ‘one-short’ if any runs are taken.
It’s come from the 16.4, the guy who proposed the idea is the same bloke who brought in some radical rules for the Big Bash. I’m not a fan of the change, I don’t see the point, there will be plenty of times where it actually has a detrimental effect in my view but in the grand scheme of things it probably won’t make a massive difference. It certainly isn’t as controversial as some of the changes that have been made recently.
