Taking guard., maybe a silly question...

[TigerCraig]

Why dont they just premark off, centre and leg rather than have the batsmen scrape the surface?

On a turf pitch the position of the stumps is pretty much set

 

[AndyLucimitis]

Agree - thought this for 40 years. When I played turf cricket I just walked out and batted on middle stump using the marks already there.

I didn't need to go through the charade of asking the umpire and then scraping 6 inches of dirt out of the crease !!

 

[Drugs Are Bad Mackay?]

Curators would love it you'd think. Stop the creases getting so wrecked

 

[Carbine Chaos]

Marking the crease has always been a foreign concept to me. I’d just always turn around and guesstimate. Thought my teammates who asked the umpire, spent time running their studs over the turf etc were just being over the top.

Then again, I was a very average bat...

Reckon the proposal in the OP is a very good one.

 

[Drugs Are Bad Mackay?]

A cranky old curator in Adelaide, sick of batters digging a small trench in his beloved pitches, once started hammering three plastic pegs into the crease for this exact reason.

 

[Pykie]

Yeah, you'd think they would could laser 3 reference pins in both creases before the game.

Like you said, it destroys the crease, which further attributes to ruts etc from the bowler when he's at that end.

 

[Knox Harrington]

I have no drama with the top couple batsmen taking guard, but after that it is a monu-freaking-mental waste of time unless you the first one in the innings who say bats on leg stump when everyone else takes middle.

I've played over 220 cricket matches as an opening/first change bowler and lower order batsmen and have never taken guard because there is always one big mark there when i get there.

My rationale, is that if the 8 blokes before me cant find centre, then i am clearly wasting my time.

And these bananas i bowl at that spend two minutes taking centre, leg, off and marking metre long lines are just idiots.

 

[Gethelred]

It could be as simple as every other line serves an umpiring purpose, which marking the position of the stumps where the batsman can see would not.

Cricket's a pedantic sport sometimes.

 

[eddiesmith]

I only do it when I open or if I want to waste time, just catch my breath and slow the game down a bit because the opposition has got a their tails up.

But I don't bother then digging the boot in.

 

[Kram]

I only do it when I open or if I want to waste time, just catch my breath and slow the game down a bit because the opposition has got a their tails up.

But I don't bother then digging the boot in.

This, even though it was usually already marked clearly I'd often just ask for middle as I guess in a routine of just composing yourself to be out in the middle and getting ready to bat.

 

[flamethrower]

I always took guard to give the umpire something to do during my time at the crease, otherwise the only job he had was to put the bails back onto the stumps as I walked back to the clubrooms after my 1 ball stay in the middle.

 

[Aussie_boy]

I always took guard to give the umpire something to do during my time at the crease, otherwise the only job he had was to put the bails back onto the stumps as I walked back to the clubrooms after my 1 ball stay in the middle.

Similar to me although slightly different, only had to raise his finger on appeal when I was batting. Think I got out LBW 7 innings in a row to start a season. Happy to admit I'm one of the world's worst cricketers, way too nerve racking a sport for me.

 

[Len Nicodemo]

I have no drama with the top couple batsmen taking guard, but after that it is a monu-freaking-mental waste of time unless you the first one in the innings who say bats on leg stump when everyone else takes middle.

I've played over 220 cricket matches as an opening/first change bowler and lower order batsmen and have never taken guard because there is always one big mark there when i get there.

My rationale, is that if the 8 blokes before me cant find centre, then i am clearly wasting my time.

And these bananas i bowl at that spend two minutes taking centre, leg, off and marking metre long lines are just idiots.

How good is it when you bowl to a tail ender who takes 3 minutes to mark all three stumps, look around the field, and sometimes even count the fielders, only to go straight through him within 3-4 balls?

 

[Kram]

It's takes like 5 seconds to get the umpire to recheck the mark.

We used to usually play on turf but occasionally had to have a game on astro turf, one of the funniest things was when this fat guy went down the wicket to do a bit of 'gardening' on it with his bat.

 

[rippersnipper]

I usually did it so that I could mark a line further down the pitch so that I knew what line the ball was pitching on. I also used to bat higher up (either open or at 3/4) so there weren't often that many marks out there when I went in. The other thing I did, especially against pace bowlers was bat over a meter outside of the crease to account for swing. There weren't that many marks that far out (generally they were on the crease line).