Batsmen can find refuge in “the crease,” which is the designated area on a cricket pitch. They are safe from being run out or stumped as long as they have a bat or body part planted inside the crease. Therefore, when in their batting stance, most batsmen would opt to keep a portion of their rear foot inside the crease. This position not only keeps them safe from being run out or stumped by a cunning wicketkeeper, but it also allows them to remain at a comfortable distance from the bowler, giving them adequate time to react to the ball. Scroll down to read Do You Know Why Batsmen Bat Outside of Their Crease?
Do You Know Why Batsmen Bat Outside Of Their Crease?
Not every batsman is positioned in this manner! Occasionally, you may observe them positioned quite differently, with both feet placed well outside of the crease. You’ve come to the correct place if you’ve been wondering why a batter would decide to take this action and what benefits it might provide. I’ll go over the various reasons why batters could decide to bat outside of the crease in this essay, along with the benefits and drawbacks of doing so!
There are a few main reasons why batsmen will choose to bat outside of their crease. They are:
- To smother any lateral movement
- To disrupt the length of the bowler
- To take LBW dismissals out of the equation
- It allows you to play on the front foot more often
I’ll go into more depth about each of these and how batting outside your crease can help you achieve it in the remaining sections of this piece. We’ll also examine the maximum depth to which elite batsmen are permitted on the pitch!
How Does Batting Outside Your Crease Help You Smother Lateral Movement?
When playing against top swing bowlers like Jimmy Anderson or Tim Southee in a test match, batters frequently stand outside of their crease. Because the batsmen can choose to bat outside of their crease to reduce the amount of swing they have to deal with, both of these bowlers can swing the ball both ways.
Currently, you might be wondering how batting outside the crease lessens the amount of swing that a batsman must contend with. That sounds like a really good question! Allow me to illustrate it for you using some diagrams!
One may observe a batter batting with their rear foot well inside the crease in the diagram on the left below. The flight path of an outswing delivery bowled to them is indicated by the red line. The ball is initially traveling straight toward the batsman, but as it gets closer, it starts to swing away from their body. Because of the swing, the ball is now well outside the line of their off stump when it reaches the batsman! Examine the diagram on the right now.
The batsman is now batting beyond his crease, which allows him to intercept the ball before it has a chance to swing too far away from him. Otherwise, it is precisely the same delivery. The ball is considerably closer to their front foot! By batting beyond your crease, you shorten the distance between the ball and the bowler, reducing the amount of time the ball has to swing before it reaches you. This greatly facilitates your ability to judge the ball and make good strokes!
How Does Batting Outside Your Crease Help You Disrupt The Length Of The Bowler?
Occasionally, a bowler may impress you with their ability to manage their length when they bowl. You won’t know whether to play on your front foot or back foot because they will keep landing the ball on the “top of the stump” length. This kind of bowler is terrible to bat against since your brain is constantly split between not knowing how to play your shots (moving ahead or backward) when faced with each delivery. Professional bowlers like Glenn McGrath, Shaun Pollock, Vernon Philander, and, more recently, Mohammad Abbas, are well-known for their ability to consistently nail a nagging length!
Therefore, batting outside of your crease is an excellent strategy to disrupt the natural length of a bowler like this one. Have a peek at the images below to see why! You can observe a decent-length delivery in the first image, where my feet are within the crease. When the ball reaches me, it’s just over knee height, so I’m not sure if I should play with my front or back foot. You can see the identical delivery in the second photo, where I’m closer to the bowler and outside my crease.
My movement has caused the decent-length delivery to become a little bit fuller, which eliminates a lot of the uncertainty about whether to play forward or back. You now know that you need to move forward and play the ball with the front foot by batting outside of your crease and making deliveries that are decent length into longer ones.
So, the bowler will know that they need to shorten their length a little bit to get the ball back in that zone where it makes you hesitate if you start batting outside your crease and hitting deliveries on the front foot more frequently. This is what you can expect as a batsman! Why not take a step back immediately before the ball is bowled to position yourself for a shorter delivery if you believe the bowler will undoubtedly shorten their length? This is an everyday strategy used by professional batters.
The number of times I’ve witnessed a bowler bowl a full ball and get driven for four, then overcorrect and bowl the ball too short on their next delivery, allowing the batsmen to simply draw the ball for another boundary, is too many to count.
In summary, batting beyond your crease can cause significant disruptions to the bowler’s rhythm. It is our duty as batsmen to constantly try to unsettle and exert pressure on the bowling. Take a look at this in practice and during online meetings to see whether it works for you!
How Does Batting Outside Your Crease Help You Take LBW Dismissals Out Of The Equation?
You can also prevent being given out LBW by batting outside of your crease, which is an amazing advantage. It helps for a very straightforward reason: the umpire will be less certain that the ball was intended to hit the stumps if it hits you more away from them when it does.
Let’s examine another example to better clarify this. Initially, picture a batsman in the traditional batting posture, with their rear foot firmly inside the line of the crease.
The ball doesn’t have much more distance to travel before it hits the stumps; therefore, if this batsman tries to play a front-foot stroke and gets hit on the pad in front of the stumps, the umpire will probably give them out. Imagine for a moment that a batsman is batting outside of his or her crease. When a batsman bats beyond their territory, the square-leg umpire normally notifies the bowlers’ umpire. If the batter is then struck on the pad, the umpire will consider that when making a decision.
Umpires generally err on the side of caution and declare the batter not out because the ball has a greater distance to travel than in the previous case, unless they are certain that the ball is going to hit the stumps. There is a greater likelihood that the ball did not reach the stumps due to the increased distance between the batsman and them!
Batsmen may be given not out on an LBW DRS review if they are too far down the pitch due to the umpires’ increased confusion when they are batting outside of their crease. You may observe an example of a batter being given a not-out LBW during a game by examining the image below. The batter was three meters from the stumps when the ball struck their pad, which is why they were declared not out. “With the batsman that far down the pitch, it is unwise to give them out; there is too much potential for error,” is essentially what the DRS computation is telling the umpire.
The degree of certainty necessary for an LBW decision to be made cannot be fully satisfied by the DR’s estimate that the ball was going to hit the stumps!
To summarize this lesson, you might want to consider batting a little bit outside of your crease if you are routinely being out for leg before wickets. In this situation, you can be out LBW, but the bowler has to hit you on the pad with a fuller delivery to get you out. Since the umpire can tell you’ve moved down the wicket, any delivery that hits you around the top of the knee roll is likely to be called not out!
How Does Batting Outside Your Crease Help You Play On The Front Foot More Often?
There’s a good probability that you will be given more deliveries to play on the front foot if you leave your crease and take up a stance that is closer to the bowler than if you remained in your initial position. The reason for this is that you are getting closer to the bowler. In addition to playing full-length balls off the front foot, you can now play the majority of excellent-length balls off the front foot as well, which is ideal if you prefer to move forward rather than backward!
Thus, you might want to attempt batting outside of your crease if you believe that you are a better front-foot player than a back-foot player!
How Far Outside Their Crease Can Batsmen Stand?
Although other laws cover it indirectly, no explicit cricket law specifies how far a batter can stand outside their crease.
A statute, for instance, prohibits “the on-strike batsman from adopting a stance in the protected area or so close to it that frequent encroachment is inevitable.” What does this mean specifically? It implies that the batsman cannot stand so far out of his crease as to wind up standing on the portion of the pitch that is protected.
Furthermore, if the batsman plays a front foot stroke and ends up standing in the protected area, even if they are just slightly outside of it, the umpire will not permit them to approach!
The graphic below shows the location of the pitch’s protected area, which is indicated. It is a 2-foot-wide, rectangular area that is around 5 feet from both popping creases. The umpire will evaluate this portion of the pitch differently, even though it doesn’t physically look any different from the rest of the pitch! Players who are discovered to be damaging the protected area will be warned and may have their playing time revoked if they persist!
In conclusion, the umpire’s decision determines the batsman’s permitted standing distance outside the crease. If the batsman feels that they are getting too close to the pitch’s protected area, the umpire will speak with them and instruct them to move back. Having said that, it’s doubtful that you’ll want to bat so close to the protected area! If you bat this far outside your crease, a fast bowler’s pace would be very tough to handle, and you want to allow yourself ample time to assess and respond to the ball!
Do You Know Why Batsmen Bat Outside Of Their Crease? What Can The Fielding Team Do To Stop You Batting Outside Your Crease?
Not only could the umpire attempt to prevent you from batting too far outside your crease, but the opposing team might also attempt to prevent you from doing so!
So what were they to do? To press you backward into your crease, one of the most obvious things to do is to try to bowl at you faster and shorter. If they have a bowler hitting 90 mph deliveries that are aimed at their upper body, no-hitters will want to be batting too far down the pitch!
Bringing the wicketkeeper up to the stumps is an additional option available to the fielding squad! By drawing the keeper up, the batsman gives the keeper the option to catch the ball and stump them if they play and miss at the ball while standing outside their crease. As a result, most batsmen would opt to bat within their crease rather than take a chance when the keeper is close to the stumps. Generally speaking, keepers only approach the stumps when the bowling is a little bit slower. For instance, the keeper will be able to make the move if the fast bowler bowls at 80 mph or slower.
Any bowling faster than 85 mph will probably be too fast for the keeper to react quickly enough to be useful.
So, this was all about Do You Know Why Batsmen Bat Outside Of Their Crease?
