If you are new to cricket or have little knowledge of the game, you may have heard this phrase but you are not entirely sure what it means...
LBW or Leg Before Wicket is a mode of dismissal (one of the ways a batsman can be out) in cricket. In a nutshell, it means that a batsman can be out if the ball hits any part of their body apart from the bat and hands holding the bat, and the ball would have hit the stumps. There are many rules surrounding this.
[1] The ball must pitch (hit the floor) on the off-side or in-line with the stumps but not on the leg-side (which is to the left side of a right-handed batsman). If the ball pitches on the leg-side it is immediately given not-out and it is then irrelevant whether the ball would have hit the stumps or not.
[2] The ball must impact (where the ball hits) the batsman in-line with the stumps. If the ball hits the batsman where they are stood outside the central part of the pitch, it is not out. However, if the batsman does not attempt a shot (meaning that they do not attempt to hit the ball with their bat) they can still be given out, providing all other conditions are met.
[3] The ball must completely miss the bat that the batsman is holding. If the ball touches the batsman is not out unless they hit the ball to a fielder who then catches the ball. This can also be done if the batsman hits the ball into themself and then a fielder catches it before it hits the ground.
[4] If the umpire considers all of these conditions to be met, they will then decide if they believe that the ball would have gone on to hit the stumps if the batsman wasn't stood in the way of it. If they believe that the ball would have hit the stumps, they will give the batsman out.
In televised matches, a system called hawk-eye is used to determine whether the ball would have hit the stumps. In some high-level games, both teams in a match have the option to review if they are not happy with the umpire's decision. This system uses multiple aspects to decide if the batsman is out or not.
First, it uses slow-motion video to see if the batsman hit the ball, and then uses sound recordings to decides if the batsman has hit the ball, a soundwave spike will appear if the batsman has hit it.
Then the system uses hawk-eye to see where the ball pitched, if the impact was in-line and if the ball would have gone on to hit the stumps, by predicting the path of the ball.
Because the system is using a prediction, there is a certain amount of leeway given to the umpires. This means that if the system decides that the ball is only 'clipping' and not fully hitting, the umpires original decision stands (this is what umpire's call means, the original umpire's call stands). The system has to show that the ball is either completely missing or more than 50% of the ball be hitting for the decision to be changed. This also counts if the ball hits the top of the stumps, being that more than 50% of it must hit the top vertically as well as horizontally.
Comments