The third T20I between England and South Africa garnered controversy as England’s analyst Nathan Leamon used placards as a means to send out instructions to captain Eoin Morgan. Leamon held up a couple of placards using a combination of letters and numbers to instruct Morgan possibly about field placements and bowling changes.
A number of former cricketers are not impressed with this, with the legendary Sunil Gavaskar believing something like this ‘should not be happening in cricket’. Joining Gavaskar is VVS Laxman, who believes that if this practice indeed forms a part of cricket rules, it may not be in the game’s greatest of interests.
“Often in T20 cricket if the captain needs to make a decision, he discusses it with the coach or the support staff or a senior player, and post that discussion, a captain usually comes to a decision,” Laxman said on the Cricket Connected Show on Star Sports.
“But if this thing (use of placard) forms a part of the rule, then I believe it is not the right thing, as you want the captain to fulfil his role otherwise you don’t require a captain, and the team can be run from outside similar to football where the manager runs the team.”
Another ex-cricketer who has raised concern over this is former Australia batsman Matthew Hayden. Hayden questioned the effectiveness of the move, saying it’s obvious there will be times that the codes given out may not be entirely comprehensible.
“The point about all of this is, how effective is it? I mean from what I understand is, some of these codes were getting mixed up, because there was a run scoring spree during that potential times and that’s the whole point of communications. You come together, you make sure you understand the plan and then you execute the plan, you can’t just leave it as understanding it,” Hayden said on the Cricket Connected Show on Star Sports.
