I’m Already Doing a Thankless Job of Wicketkeeping, Don’t Want to Do Umpiring: Parthiv Patel

A simpler version of the rain-rules, and more incentives for taking wickets in four-day matches. These are the changes Parthiv Patel would like to see in domestic cricket going forward.

Parthiv, the Gujarat captain who has played 25 Tests and 38 ODIs for India, said the current tie-breaker rule in Ranji Trophy where Net Run-Rate is considered if teams are tied on points and outright wins is not ideal.

“There are some funny laws, like the bad light one, or Duckworth-Lewis or what we use here (India uses V Jayadevan method). You can’t calculate it, it’s just a formula. If you could somehow make it easier,” Parthiv told Cricketnext in the Laws of Cricket Challenge.

“There’s one more in domestic cricket which is, in a 4-day game, if points and number of outright wins are equal and if you’ve not played against each other, they will go by the run rate. And run rate doesn’t include taking wickets. So in a 4-day format, if you’re taking away the advantage of taking wickets, it means caution comes into play. So I feel in four-day cricket, it should always be about taking wickets against scoring runs, not just the run rate.”

The run-rate law was, in fact, modified for the 2019-20 domestic season to factor in wickets. As per the current rule, if teams are tied on points and wins (and haven’t played each other earlier), the team with higher run quotient will qualify.

The run quotient is calculated as: (runs scored by the team/wickets lost by the team)/(runs scored against the team/wickets taken by the team).

WATCH | The Laws of Cricket Challenge, Episode 1 With Parthiv Patel

On a lighter note, Parthiv, who led Gujarat to the semifinal of the Ranji Trophy earlier this year, said umpiring is not something he would take up as a career after his playing days.

“I’ve already been doing one thankless job of wicketkeeping, I don’t want to do another thankless job of umpiring,” he said.

“Somehow I have always been very critical of umpires in every form of the game. I have also had lot of fights with umpires. But somehow in the last couple of years I have started to sympathise with umpires, I don’t know why. But yes, since I’m about to end my career, maybe I’m slightly more logical about how the game works and all that, so I have all my sympathies for the umpires.”