The game of cricket now takes the way of Hockey and Football as the Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC,) has decided to introduce a red card in it. This red card will send the player off the field. This change will be introduced from local matches to international games. This move has been taken in regard with the rise of abuse on the cricket field. It is an effort to stamp out violence as the action will be taken against all serious disciplinary breaches like threatening an umpire, physically assaulting a player, official or spectator, or any other act of violence.
Marylebone Cricket Club decided that this punishment will be in effect from October 2017 when the MCC will redraft Laws of Cricket. Yellow cards and a sin-bin were also discussed by the cricket committee but were thought harder to implement consistently. Mike Brearly, the chairman of MCC, said at a press meet that, “This is a pretty drastic change to the laws. Umpires have to be respected and given the best possible chance. Cricket is the only game apart from Australian Rules Football in which there isn’t this possibility of an in-match deterrent.”
He also added, “I think you call [cricket] a game that you play hard and play fair. The Spirit of Cricket is represented by that. That does not include hitting someone over the back of the head with a bat or punching them. This is for use in extreme cases.” Over the past few years, there has been a constant rise in the abuse on the field, in particular, on-field abuse between the players. This behavior is not good for healthy competition between the teams and to curb this out the red card has been planned to be introduced.
The MCC meeting took place in Mumbai for two years. Other recommendations apart from red card were, limits to the size of bats, with 40 mm edge and 67 mm depth maximum size. The recommendations will be verified again by the full MCC committee before the Laws are formally implemented from October 1.
