Page:The Crisis in Cricket and the Leg Before Rule (1928).djvu/46



N 1902 the Minor Counties, at the request of the M.C.C., gave a trial to see how the change in the l.b.w. rule, as carried by an insufficient majority at the M.C.C. annual meeting would work in their competition matches. The late Mr. Pardon, for Wisden's Almanack for 1903, asked the various counties concerned to send in their opinions as to how the change worked. Before going carefully into the various replies three points must be borne in mind. In the first place, as no doubt umpiring under the changed rule was different though not more difficult than it was under the old law, the trial was not satisfactory; it should have been made in first-rate cricket and with first-rate umpires, instead of second-rate cricket with second-rate umpires. In the second place the number of cases of l.b.w. in 1901 and 1902 was one in nineteen wickets, but in these days it varies to one in eight or nine which shows that the l.b.w. cases are more than double now what they were in 1901-2, and the evil therefore greater. In the third place, whatever the rule or the interpretation may be, umpiring in l.b.w. cases must always be difficult.

It must be admitted that a majority of Minor Counties' captains and secretaries of the various clubs were averse from any change in the law, but a careful perusal of their letters,