Mathews’ fielding conforms to Laws

Date released: 11 June 2009

MCC, the Guardians of the Laws and Spirit of Cricket, has confirmed that the piece of fielding by Sri Lankan, Angelo Mathews, which took place during the ICC World Twenty20 game against the West Indies at Trent Bridge on Wednesday 10 June, conformed to the Laws of Cricket.

The fielding

• Watch Mathews' fielding on YouTube

Mathews makes his amazing diving parry Mathews was fielding on the boundary at long-on, when the ball was struck towards him. The ball would have gone for six but Mathews, while still inside the boundary, tried to catch it above his head.

Although this attempt was successful, Mathews’ momentum was taking him over the boundary rope and so he threw the ball in the air. He fell to the ground just outside the boundary and noticed that the ball was coming down towards him again.

With quick thinking and incredible skill, he then jumped in the air and, while airborne, parried the ball back towards the field of play. The ball landed just inside the boundary rope, where it remained.

Mathews then picked himself up, re-entered the field of play, picked up the ball and threw it back to the bowler.

In the meantime, the batsmen had completed three runs and there was debate as to whether it should be three runs or six.

Umpire Billy Bowden referred to the 3rd umpire and made the correct decision At no point was Mathews both in contact with the ball and the ground beyond the boundary at the same time. His first contact with the ball was when he was grounded inside the boundary and the next contact was when he was outside the boundary but crucially, was airborne and so not grounded while he made contact with the ball.

Mathews’ fielding was deemed legal according to Law 19.3(a)(ii). The on-field umpires, Billy Bowden and Simon Taufel, referred the matter to the 3rd umpire, Ian Gould and, after several replays, Gould was able to confirm that only three runs should be credited to the batting side.

Gould has been a member of MCC’s Laws sub-committee for the last two years and Taufel has just joined this body; he will attend his first meeting at Lord’s next week.

Stephenson: Brilliant acts are "good for the game" John Stephenson, MCC Assistant Secretary, said: "The MCC Laws sub-committee had recently discussed fielding such as this and felt that such brilliant and quick-thinking acts should not be out-lawed.

"MCC is happy with the Law as it is written and occurrences such as the one yesterday, while extremely rare, are good for the game of cricket as a whole. It is also pleasing that two of the committee’s members were involved in making the correct decision on the field of play."

Ask the Laws Department

Always ahead of the game, MCC's Fraser Stewart covered this very topic in his "Ask the Laws Department" column published in Wisden and on Lords.org.

Back in May, in Ask the Laws Department VIII, Stewart went even further confirming that, should an airbourne fielder parry the ball back into play from behind the boundary, a legal catch could be taken to dismiss the batsman.

MCC Laws sub-committee

The MCC Laws sub-committee meets regularly at Lord’s and discusses a wide variety of issues relating to the Laws of the game.

In 2008, the sub-committee confirmed the legality of Kevin Pietersen’s ‘switch-hit’ and oversaw a change to Law 6 (the bat), which restricts the materials that bats can be made out of.