ACS Overseas First-Class Annual 2019

4 Preface This, the eleventh edition of the ACS Overseas First-Class Annual , sets a new record of its own with 704 pages. This is largely the consequence of a major restructuring of the Ranji Trophy, for more details of which see the India section. Indeed, the present volume would have been even larger if not for some off-setting reductions in the number of games in some other countries. The structure of the Annual will be familiar to regular users. Each country has its own section consisting of a brief narrative introduction and the relevant league tables, followed by the full score of each first-class match. Like its predecessors, this year’s Annual provides cards for all first- class matches throughout the world except for those in England and Wales, for which the reader is referred to Wisden . Each edition of the Annual has its share of statistical highlights and this year is no exception. Sri Lanka is a particularly rich source, providing not only the first all-ten since 2009/10 (and, remarkably, a ‘ninefer’ in the same match) but also the equalling of a record that one might have expected to stay unique for all time, as Angelo Perera matched the celebrated feat of Arthur Fagg of scoring twin double centuries in a first-class match. The Annual also covers the first instance since 2015/16 of four wickets in consecutive balls, a feat performed on 44 previous occasions in first-class cricket but never before with all victims lbw. Curiosities of the year include two first-class debutants past their 45th birthday and the main competition of a Test-playing nation so wretchedly mauled by the weather that not one match reached a definite result. A recurring issue this year, and one of the most striking and questionable developments in the modern first-class game, is the full substitute. No longer is it an article almost of faith that a serious game of cricket is played only by the eleven participants on each side whose names are exchanged before the toss. For some years past this principle has been eroded as it has become accepted that a player pulled out of a match for international duty may be replaced by a substitute permitted to play a full part in the game both as batsman and bowler. After all, the reasoning runs, why should a team that has relinquished a player for the national side be further penalized by not being able to replace him? And if this argument is accepted, why then should a cricketer released from international duty not likewise be able to join his regular team mid-match, as a full member of the side, with one of his colleagues giving way? Of course, from an historic perspective cricket was not alone in its hostility to substitutes. Soccer and rugby, for instance, once took a similar line. Their experience was that once the practice was permitted in narrowly defined special cases, it rapidly came to be accepted as normal and legitimate, to be used at discretion by team management as a tactical ploy depending on the state of the game, or to allow tired (but uninjured) players to give way to fresher colleagues. The International Cricket Council, well aware of these precedents, was adamant, in laying down the rules governing the classification of official cricket, that full substitution would be allowed only for international call-ups and releases – and absolutely not for any other purpose, in particular not for injury. So the game’s traditionalists, while no doubt wincing at full substitutions in the limited circumstances laid down, could console themselves that injury substitutions, with all the tempting tactical opportunities they would create, were not permitted; and moreover that international cricket, in particular Test matches, would remain sacrosanct. But increasing medical concern about the long-term risks associated with concussion has now led the ICC to relax the rule so that from 1 August 2019, at all levels of the game including Tests, a player suffering a concussion injury can be replaced by a full substitute. Nor was there long to wait before this new provision was applied at the highest possible level: on 18 August, on the fifth day