Forward-Thinking Is The Way For MCC In Curtain-raiser

The traditional season curtain-raiser between champion county and MCC begins in Dubai this Sunday, with players of both sides afforded the opportunity to impress England selectors desperately in search for some reliability in the Test team’s top-order.

With early season weather unpredictable, MCC, the match hosts, have held the fixture abroad – mostly in the United Arab Emirates – for the past nine years. Before that it was held at Lord’s where if it did move to a conclusion, rain, sleet or snow would still play their part.

Shifting the game to sunnier climes is not the only innovation MCC are credited with as the most famous members’ cricket club has gradually shed its crusty Edwardian image. This game will use the new red Dukes balls which have tighter stitching of the seams to prevent them seaming around as much as last year’s batch. That means the match will be, rightfully, daylight hours only.

With a world Test Championship looming it makes sense for the ball to be standardised. This, then, will be a good test of the tweaked Dukes ball in conditions it wouldn’t be used in normally, the pitches in the United Arab Emirates rarely as lavishly grassed as those in England.

MCC are also keen to improve the speed of play which every year seems to slow to the point where another over is lost during the scheduled hours of play. Fines for players or banning the captain haven’t worked and nor has overtime, so other solutions are being sought.

Although nobody has yet gone as far as to make it compulsory for bowlers to mark out their run-ups before play, most do so anyway, at both ends. But why stop there? Why not also have pre-marked lines on the crease for batsmen, showing leg, middle and off-stumps?

Those ideas have yet to be enforced but one thing that will be tried out in Dubai is for umpires to put a countdown clock on the fielding side. For the moment, the expectation is that the bowler must be ready to start the next over within 45 seconds of the previous one ending.