Is Front No Ball Rule The Reason Why Fast Bowlers Are Injuring Themselves More?

Cricket Image for Is Front No Ball Rule The Reason Why Fast Bowlers Are Injuring Themselves More? (Image Source: AFP)

Fast bowlers are the most susceptible to getting injured through their careers than the rest of the lot. The pacers come in running from a long run up and then have to push their body in rhythmic action to complete one delivery. The workload is too much for bowlers not to wear down. 

But why is it that the pacers have to push their bodies while loading their action and put stress on themselves? The injuries didn't happen at such a rapid pace earlier but the occurrences of them upped in the last 50 years because of one rule change. 

According to researcher Doug Ackerly, when MCC introduced the front-foot no-ball law in 1963, it created a massive impact on the bodies of fast bowlers. 

"For 200 years in cricket, the criterion for a no-ball was the fact that your back foot had to land behind the bowling crease, which is where the stumps are planted. Once it landed clear of that you were home free; it didn't matter where your front foot landed," Ackerly told ABC News Breakfast. 

Ackerly wrote an entire book about this, Front Foot: The Law That Changed Cricket, in which he argued that the law shortened the delivery stride of the fast bowlers which puts stress on the body.

"What I found was that it shortened the delivery stride ... and a jump appeared in the gather, which is the preparation before the delivery stride for fast bowlers," he said. "(Now you get)lumbar stress fractures and front foot stress fractures with five to eight times your body weight going through that front foot."

Ackerly's book says that from the 60s through to the 90s, pace bowlers bowled more than 5000 balls per year but in the last decade, that count has gone down to 2000-3000. 

His research got backing from former Australian cricketer Ian Chappell who once wrote in his article on ESPNcricinfo, "A simple return to a back-foot no-ball law, which was only abandoned because of draggers, would not only eradicate the confusion and inconsistency but also bring other positives to the game." 

What Is The No-Ball Law? 

According to law 21.5, for a delivery to be fair in respect of the feet, in the delivery stride: 21.5.1 the bowler’s back foot must land within and not touching the return crease appertaining to his/her stated mode of delivery; 21.5.2 the bowler’s front foot must land with some part of the foot, whether grounded or raised on the same side of the imaginary line joining the two middle stumps as the return crease described in 21.5.1, and behind the popping crease.