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The problems with Law 42
- Updated: November 22, 2016
Whether or not Faf du Plessis applied an artificial substance to the ball in Hobart was “irrelevant”, David Warner said on Tuesday. And, to the series outcome, perhaps that is true. But that du Plessis was that evening found guilty enough of ball-tampering to cop a fine was anything but irrelevant to cricket’s bigger picture.
Under the Laws of Cricket – Law 42, to be precise – players are allowed to “polish the ball provided that no artificial substance is used”. Du Plessis’ second conviction in three years – and South Africa’s third – is a warning to the rest that there will be a crackdown on this law, even though there is no clarity on what, for cricket’s purposes, constitutes an “artificial substance”.
Broadly speaking, we all have some idea that shoe polish is synthetic and saliva is natural but what if the shoe polish is mixed with saliva? How much of the synthetic substance needs to mix with the natural one for all of it to be deemed artificial? And what if the artificial substance is food? Organic food? The wording of the law is too vague.
As Jason Gillespie said in an interview on these pages, “It’s a tough one because in the laws of the game it says, technically, no one should be able to have anything in their mouth on the ground. You shouldn’t be able to have any lollies, chewing gum, anything. I mean how far do we want to go? You can’t have a Gatorade or whatever power drink they have because it’s got sugar in it. So everyone, just drink water. Where do you want to go with it?”
Gillespie is one of several former players to support the “storm in a teacup” argument over the shining of the ball. “It is actually just accepted and isn’t a big deal,” Matt Prior said on Twitter, while Sourav Ganguly told ESPNcricinfo’s Match Day du Plessis, “is not the first person who has done it and I don’t think he will be the last.”
That was what South Africa were hoping would get du Plessis out of trouble. They are understood to have used the …
