Leicestershire penalized with 5 runs for throwing the ball and hurting the batsman

The County cricket in England has started after a long wait due to coronavirus. As the government restrictions have started to ease out and the Test cricket in England came back to life, the expectations for the domestic tournament were on the higher side.

The players and experts wanted the County cricket to restart as it provides great opportunities to young players to play for England plus a much-needed revenue and employment to cricket fraternity. The matches are being played behind closed doors now.

A unique and first of its kind decision came in one of the matches as the bowling team was penalised with 5 runs for throwing the ball the batsman. Lancashire’s Danny Lamb drove a fuller ball towards the bowler, Dieter Klein who grabbed the ball and threw it back at the batsman. The impact was hard as the batsman dropped his bat and hopped towards the square leg.

The umpire then made a decision which will be remembered for quite some time at least. The Lancashire team was awarded 5 runs as Leicestershire was penalised. The incident was counted as a level 2 offence, following the law 42. The specific law broken was 42.3.1 which says, “throwing the ball at a player in an inappropriate or dangerous manner”.

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A five-run penalty is handed to Leicestershire for this incident with Dieter Klein

Match Centre ➡ https://t.co/pd9c61XXvR pic.twitter.com/WJT2SRCnFW

— Lancashire Cricket (@lancscricket) August 2, 2020

The first round of the County Championship commenced on Sunday

The County season is an integral part of English cricket. Regarded as the best domestic tournament in the world, it invites a lot of foreign players too. Recently a few of South African cricketers including fast bowler Morne Morkel decided to sign a Kolpak deal with the league. The biggest reason is that the money involved in other nations apart from the ‘Big Three’ is quite less and the County cricket pays well and they need to work only during the English summer.

The first round of the County Championship commenced on Sunday. The drama, however, came on the 2nd day of the game. Lancashire, after winning the toss and opting to bat, ended Day 1 on 265/6. The ICC keeps on rewriting the laws of cricket, but the safety of the players have always been the primary concern. A lot of rules have been made against the fielders in recent years. Some of them include a higher degree of punishments.