Crossing The Line: Fielder Concedes Boundary Deliberately, Team Penalized

Cricket, they say, is a gentleman’s game. Cricket is also a sport driven by tactics.

But there is a thin line between playing by the rules and violating them.

In a rarest of rare incident at the international level, a team was penalized after a fielder was found to have conceded a boundary intentionally.

On Day 3 of the Test match between against Afghanistan, Zimbabwe batsman Sikandar Raza hit a cover drive and the ball stopped just inches short of the boundary rope. As Afghan fielder Hashmatullah Shahidi bent down to pick up the ball, he was seen to have put his left foot across the boundary line.

His intention was to concede a boundary, so that tailender Blessing Muzarabani would be on strike in the next over, and not well-set batsman Raza who was batting on 79.

Umpires Ahmed Shah Pakteen and Aleem Dar had a discussion before ruling that Shahidi’s act was intentional. They awarded an extra run to Zimbabwe and allowed Raza to retain strike for the next over.

The umpires went by the relevant law 19.8 on ‘Overthrow or wilful act of fielder’, which states: If the boundary results from an overthrow or from the wilful act of a fielder, the runs scored shall be — any runs for penalties awarded to either side and the allowance for the boundary and the runs completed by the batsmen, together with the run in progress if they had already crossed at the instant of the throw or act.