The Cricket Statistician No 195

16 may also arise if penalty runs are awarded following intervention by a match referee some time after the misdemeanour happened. It may also be confusing to spectators: they may find it easiest to determine a partnership from the difference between two ‘fall of wicket’ scores. There may also be cases where it was not straightforward to establish if the penalty related to a delivery (and the umpires may not specify what type of infringement had occurred). One option was that penalties should never be allocated to a partnership. Another possible solution, with limited differentiation, was that penalties awarded to the fielding side would not be allocated to a partnership but all those awarded to the batting side would be allocated to the partnership in force at the time. That led to the question of what to do if a penalty was awarded to the batting side but no partnership was taking place at the time of the misdemeanour, e.g. after a wicket had fallen and before a new batter had arrived at the wicket. In practice, the score has to be updated before the next delivery (which the umpires require). Law 41.18.3 also states that penalty runs ‘shall not be regarded as runs scored from either the preceding delivery or the following delivery’. Following an approach by David Kendix, the MCC Laws Committee confirmed their stance concerning the award of penalty runs in between overs. If the incident giving rise to the penalty took place before the end of the over, the penalty is included before the end of the over. If the incident took place after the previous over, the penalty is added before the start of the next over. 20 Should an all run 4 (or 6) be included in the number of 4s and 6s hit by a batter or should they be restricted only to boundaries? There was a view that 4 and 6, as signalled by an umpire, are ‘special’ as they are boundaries. i.e. the ball had crossed or passed over the boundary to the field of play. Using this principle, it was argued that an all-run 4 (or 5 or 6) should not be regarded as a 4 or 6. However, this point of view would lead to an inconsistency with historical records, where the number of 4s and 6s have been derived from scorebook records, which do not distinguish between an all-run 4 or 6. The sub-group recommended to restrict the use of 4s and 6s (as shown on scorecard summaries and records) as hit by a batter to boundary 4s and 6s. It was acknowledged that this will lead to inconsistencies with past practice. 21 Should a boundary 4 overthrow (with or without additional runs i.e. 5, 6, 7) be included in the number of 4s and 6s hit by a batter? There was discussion on whether 4 runs from an overthrow should be credited to the batter as a boundary 4. This was felt appropriate, the important distinction being that these were runs ‘awarded’ by the umpire. There is also the related issue over the treatment of a no ball that goes over the wicketkeeper’s head and runs away for 4 byes. The sub-group will re-visit these issues at a future meeting. 25 What is the ACS’ policy on grounds where their names have changed? The sub-group agreed that it was appropriate that the settlement shown on digital scorecards and records should be the name of that settlement as it is now known