Slowing down a game of cricket, Australian style

10 tips to slow down a game of cricket:

 

1. Before the first ball of every over slowly jog up to the bowler and spend 30s discussing field placements and the over to be bowled, if no field placements need to be discuss you may talk about the weather, the pitch, what’s for dinner or variety of other factors.
2. In every instant where something happens “outside of the plans”, walk from your fielding position to the bowler or vice captain and spend 30s talking in detail about what happened and what changes should be made to stop it from occurring.
3. If there is a left and right hand batting combination, every time the strike is turned over jog to bowler and discuss the tactics required for this batsmen or to remind him that this batsmen bats facing the opposite direction.
4. If anything even remotely goes wrong that requires an umpire to adjudicate slowly walk over to the umpires, ask for clarification, discuss said clarification, decide with umpires how to best avoid said event happening again, then slowly walk up to the bowler and repeat step 2.
5. Never, never, never, never rush a drinks break.  Drinks break are there for a rest and the 3 minutes set aside is just a guideline.
6. Forget about jogging between overs… there’s no point anyway because the captain should be following step 1 and 2.
7. At every possible opportunity involve yourself in a verbal or even physical stoush with the opposition, requiring the umpires to intervene and step 4 to be initiated.
8. Make sure the pace bowlers bowl the ball and then stand around for 30s staring at the batsmen in disbelief at every available opportunity (eg: Good shot or poor shot).  This opens the avenue for step 7 to be intitated, which leads to step 4 being repeated again.
9. Always run on the part of the wicket which will force the umpires to give the bowler a verbal warning, this intitiates step 4.

 

AND for the final way to slow down the game of cricket in international cricket….

 

10. Ensure Umpire Bowden officiates the game.  This will ensure that if the game is travelling to smoothly that he will find someone to stand out and be noticed, taking the attention to him and in most instances initiating step 4.

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