Lorgat justifies the removal of “runners” from One-day format

On the conclusion of annual conference on Thursday, the International Cricket Council

(ICC) chief Haroon Lorgat has justified their decision of finishing the “runners” in One-Day internationals matches, citing that batsmen take negative advantage of it.

ICC Executive Board made this decision of abolishing the runners during its five-day long annual conference, carried out at Hong Kong this week.

“It’s been considered by the cricket committee… and there has been a strong feeling that runners were used not in the right spirit,” Lorgat told reporters here.

Runner is usually called in, when a batsman sustains injury and fails to take runs by running. The rule is being used for more than a century, but now the world’s governing body finds this system as an abuse.

“It’s quite a difficult one for umpires to determine whether there has been a real injury to batters or whether it was a tactical use of runners,” added Lorgat.

“If a bowler gets injured you can’t continue bowling for the rest of the day and the feeling was that it would be better to not allow the use of runners because there has been abuse in the past,” Lorgat said.

The decision of ICC received different reactions from the former cricketers as well as from other cricketing figures. The former Indian skipper, Sunil Gavaskar condemned the ICC’s decision of abolishing the runners, stating that
if injured batsman can’t be facilitated with runners then bowlers should also not be allowed to drink water near boundary.

Gavaskar also opposed the use of substitute fielders during the match, stating that rules should be equal for batsmen as well as bowlers.

On the contrary the former West Indian skipper, Clive Lloyd backed the restriction on the use of runners for injured players. He also stated that rules should be equal for both bowlers as well as batsmen.

Lloyd gave logic that if a bowler gets injured, nobody else is called to bowl for him, he has to quit, and so should be the case with the batsmen.

Apart from these, ICC has also introduced some other rules in the one-day format of the game, which suggest the use of new balls at each end. In addition, batting and bowling power plays are allowed between 16 and 40 overs.