How the laws of cricket are governed and amended

By Anand Vasu

If India were denied after two tied outings in the final of the World Cup there is a good chance a predominantly Indian crowd would have set fire to the stands, leading to the second version of the Ashes. But, even with England winning on the boundaries rule, and New Zealand taking it on the chin, the levels of outrage in India have exceeded anything in any other cricket playing nation.

In England there is understandable celebration, in New Zealand, Kane Williamson and friends have been accorded the welcome they deserve and the rest have more or less moved on.


One of the problems in stomaching the factor that eventually separated the two teams was its arbitrariness: why boundaries and not fewer wickets lost? And this was compounded by the fact that this was the most extreme of possible extremities.

For the record, the number of boundaries criterion comes from the playing conditions of the tournament, not the rules or laws of the game, sometimes used interchangeably, that are set out by the Laws Committee of the Marylebone Cricket Club, or the MCC.

Well before the dramatic scenes of the final of the World Cup unfolded, ET Sport, sat down with Fraser Stewart, Laws Manager, at Lord’s, to better understand the process in which the laws of the game were governed, and amended.

“I’m the person who is called up when something controversial happens and I have to face the press, but it is not as though what is my opinion that becomes a law,” explained Stewart. “It is based on the consensus of a group of people.”

What then is this group?

In 2000 there was a major look at the Laws (anything that Lord’s sets out begins with a capital letter) and there have been tweaks in 2003, 2008, 2010 before a major redraft in 2017. With the 2017 effort in mind, the Laws Committee sent out a questionnaire to every full member, and some associate nations. The idea was that this would be passed down the line in each geography, to get answers from players, umpires and other officials at every level.

“We fed the information into a big matrix,” says Stewart. “We had a fair idea what we thought but we also needed to know what the players thought, what the umpires thought, what people at the recreational level thought. That gave us a bit more ammunition, if you like, when we wanted to change a particular law.”

Once this input was received, it would then go to a sub-committee that included the likes of Australia’s Simon Taufel, India’s S Ravi, and Chris Kelly and Alan Fordham from England, who all have years of experience playing and managing the game. But it did not end here. Once the MCC Cricket Committee and the World Cricket Committee had added their inputs, it went to a more specialised team. “Once we got the green light, a drafting group of 5-6 people did their bit, every comma and/or would be thought through, looking at the unintended consequences. If we do that how is it going to affect this? Some laws have many reincarnations. One thing we’ve had to look at is boundary catching as fielding gets more athletic. Eventually there comes the daunting moment when you press send, you’ve approved the laws and it goes to print.”

Of course, the most contentious law change of recent times involves Mankading. And the MCC has to be given a thumbs up in the role they have played. “That particular law we changed in 2017, we felt, the bowlers were being criticised for something in which the batsman was trying to get an advantage. So we changed the title from “bowler attempting to run out the non-striker” to “non-striker leaving his ground early.” It’s a subtle change but shifts the emphasis to the non-striker.”

When it was put to Stewart that it was unusual that a private members’ club governed the Laws and not the International Cricket Council (ICC), he referred to golf, which had a similar situation in that the Professional Golf Association took their cue from Royal & Ancient Golf Club of St Andrews in their game. “One of the reasons we try to be as global and consultative as possible is just this. We have direct links to the ICC Cricket Committee — John Stephenson, Director of Cricket at MCC is on that. Cricket has become very political and that we are not ICC is in some ways an advantage,” said Stewart. “ICC is effectively a collection of member boards, some are more powerful than others, so we have a neutrality that they may not have. We don’t live in the Lord’s bubble, but rather write Laws that are equally applicable in the maidans of India and parks in Australia. We are connected to the globe, but we are independent.”

Did Stewart envisage a time when the ICC would actually take over the Laws? “Personally, I don’t think so. The MCC has been going for well over 200 years now. They’ve owned the laws for a long time. We take it seriously, and I believe we do a good job. I don’t think there is a clamour from people to take the laws away from the MCC. As long as the relationship between MCC and ICC stays strong, there is no real need to change this.”