The sight-screen puzzle

Sometime after tea today, both Virender Sehwag and Rahul Dravid got distracted. As Shoaib Akhtar prepared himself to hurtle in and deliver one of his thunderbolts, Sehwag backed away and started gesticulating. Somewhere close to the sight-screen at the Golf Course end, someone was moving and it took a while for the source of the problem to be informed.

Simon Taufel tried, Shoaib tried, the fielders tried but finally it required Shoaib to walk all the way to the boundary line – which one realised wasn’t too far from where he starts running in – and rectify the situation. Movement behind the screen has, is and will continue to be a big hassle for the batsmen.

It’s obviously never easy to concentrate on an object moving towards you when the background is not still. And it’s even more frustrating when you have security personnel wandering around in the vicinity of the sight screen.

All this though is not a problem when the bowler is running in from the other end and one was immediately reminded of an incident in a Bangladesh-Zimbabwe Test when one of the bowlers missed a caught and bowled chance. The reason given: he couldn’t spot the ball as there was some movement behind the screen.

So bowlers of the world unite and ensure that there is absolutely no distractions when you begin your run-up. You never know when a chance may arrive and, unlike a batsman, it’s not possible to back away and replay the ball. It's been a batsman's game for too long; just take matters into you own hands, even if it means creating one royal fuss.