Cricket's laws invoked to settle Canterbury club dispute

The law is the law is the law.

Canterbury Cricket have been wrestling with an issue that must raise its head at various times through every season somewhere in the world.

The idea that on a rainy day, one game was allowed to carry on while all others were ordered off.

The implication being that the players in the game that carried on were given an unfair advantage to collect competition points.

So it was in Christchurch on December 7 last year.

In a senior grade match between High School Old Boys' (HSOB) and Marist, the umpires allowed play to continue for an hour longer than other matches. The result was that HSOB achieved an outright win.

The other senior Christchurch clubs used their collective muscle to protest the action on the basis of the Canterbury Cricket Association's Rule 24A and an amendment passed on September 25, 2002 that precluded any time being extended on the second day of a two-day game.

Canterbury Cricket upheld the protest.

But HSOB appealed and request a review.

Canterbury Cricket's board of directors granted the appeal and appointed an appeal panel. That panel comprised the Association's code of conduct commissioners Lee Robinson and Keith Hales, the Association president Brian Adams.

Under their decision, Law 21.8 was invoked, that being the law stating umpires having the sole responsibility for the correctness of scores and, as a result of that, Law 21.10 that once the umpires have agreed the correctness of the score with the scorers at the end of the team, the result could not be changed.

The 12 points returned to HSOB carried them from second to first on the senior two-day competition table.