Red cards for cricketers! MCC’s new rules are game-changers

NEW DELHI: In what is a major change in how cricket, the traditional gentleman’s game, is played, on-field umpires will have the authority, like their football counterparts, to send off players for breaches of behaviour.

This will be part of the new laws of cricket that will come into effect from October 1 , confirmed Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC).

The new laws are based on the recommendations of the MCC Cricket Committee. UMPIRE SANCTIONS UNDER THE NEW CODE Level 1: Offences which could invite action include excessive appealing and showing dissent at an umpire’s decision.

Following an official warning, a second Level 1 offence will result in five penalty runs being awarded to the opposing team.

Level 2: Offences (including throwing the ball at a player or making deliberate physical contact with an opponent during play), will result in the immediate awarding of five penalty runs to the opposing team.

Level 3: Offences (including intimidating an umpire or threatening to assault another player, team official or spectator) will result in five penalty runs and a removal of the offending player from the field for a set number of overs, depending on the format of the match.

Level 4: Offences (threatening an umpire or committing any act of violence on the field of play), will result in five penalty runs and the removal of the offending player. If the player is batting at the time of the offence, he/she will be recorded as ‘retired out’. “We felt the time had come to introduce such sanctions ,” said John Stephenson, MCC’s head of cricket. LUCKNOW: Two suspected militants were apparently shot at in a house in Lucknow amid conflicting reports that police were trying to catch them alive after information that they were linked to a blast in a Bhopal-Ujjain passenger train on Tuesday.

Officers suspect they were operatives from an Indian module of the Islamic State (IS) terrorist group. After a nine-hour sporadic gunfight, police said the two suspects were wounded but still holed up in the house.

“We are not in a hurry … we want to catch them alive. We used chilli bombs,” UP Anti-Terrorist Squad (ATS) inspector general Aseem Arun said.

The ATS reached the cleric’s house in a thickly-populated locality on the outskirts of Lucknow around 2pm after specific inputs about militants linked to the train blast.

The commandos came under a volley of fire when they moved in, forcing the officers to use stakeout and stealth to get close to the militants. They were not sure how many men were in the house adjoining a mosque.

The commandos thought a lone gunman was involved, but a micro-camera drilled through the roof revealed the presence of another man.

Police were not sure if one of the suspects was Saifullah alias Saiful, a Lucknow resident and a member of the group that carried out the train blast.

The explosion near Kalapipal, around 80km west of Bhopal, in the train’s last coach left at least 10 passengers wounded. Among them were two teenage girls and two women.

Initially thought to be a tubelight burst, investigators found later that it was a low-intensity pipe bomb, an improvised explosive device (IED) that went off when it was being shipped possibly to a location in UP, where the final round of assembly polls are due on Wednesday.

Madhya Pradesh inspector general (law and order) Makrand Deouskar said ammonia nitrate was used in the bomb that exploded around 8.50am.