Beard Liberation Front
19th July
Contact Keith Flett 07803 167266#
172 years after his birth time to put W G Grace at the centre of modern cricket
The Beard Liberation, the informal network of beard wearers, has said that 172 years after his birth its time to put W G Grace at the centre of modern cricket.
Grace was born on 18th July 1848 in Downend and died in 1915.
His cricket and his beard were legendary and continue to be one of the most iconic images in sport.
The BLF says that English cricket has become increasingly hirsute in recent years and nowhere is this better captured than England captain Joe Root coming out with a designer beard for the second Test against the West Indies at Old Trafford.
Its now time to bring the framework of cricket in line with the ever-increasing hirsuteness of the game
A number of key issues relating to beards in cricket are stuck in the corridor of uncertainty
Take the case of a batsman with a substantial, W G Grace style beard, and a wicket keeper with a very similar growth of facial hair. A spin bowler delivers a ball which confuses the batsman and ends up in the gloves of the wicket keeper. Yet in the flurry of beards around the wicket the umpires view is obscured and because of the mass of facial hair involved ball tracking technology is not decisive as to whether or not the batsman hit the ball.
The campaigners say that as things stand the batsman’s actions might be held to be covered by Rule 42 (2) on Fair and Unfair Play which states in part ‘The umpires shall be the sole judges of fair and unfair play. If either umpire considers an action not covered by the Laws to be unfair he shall intervene without appeal..’
A concern could be that the batsman had deliberately deployed his beard to obscure the umpires view much as, before DRS, batsmen occasionally moved their pad when an lbw shout was made.
However the BLF says that in its view this would be pogonophobic and that cricket’s laws must be updated in a such a way as to take positive account of players beards.
BLF Organiser Keith Flett said, in 2020 cricket needs its W G Grace moment. There are many more important things than beards, but in cricket as W G underlined, they matter.
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