Leaving a ball in cricket is a judgement call. It is a spot judgement taken by the batsmen that the incoming delivery will not hit the stumps. Hence, as the reasoning goes, the ball can safely be let go off.
Yet, despite a long, distinguished history, it seems the art is still yet to be perfected by many a batsman.
Two South Australian batsmen, Sam Raphael and Callum Ferguson epitomised this on Saturday in their ongoing Sheffield Shield match against Victoria. During the sixth over of the South Australian innings, Raphael left a Chris Tremain delivery because he thought it would miss the stumps. However, the ball ended up taking the off stump, stunning Raphael.
One would think that incoming batsmen would learn from their mistakes but no. Ferguson replicated the mistake from a Scott Boland delivery and the result was the same with the wicket doing an extra cartwheel. For onlookers, it is perhaps the most comic way a batsman can be dismissed. For the batsmen involved though, it is utter humiliation.
Recently, Sri Lanka’s Lahiru Kumara also got out it a similar manner to South Africa’s Vernon Philander, which set social media abuzz.
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