ABSTRACT

The situation where a Bowler runs out a non-striker who has strayed from his ground before a delivery (‘backing up’) is known in Australia as Mankading. The practice of Mankading is named after Indian bowler M.H.‘Vinoo’ Mankad, the first player to achieve such a dismissal in a Test match when he ran out the wandering W.A.Brown at the SCG in the 1947-48 series between the two countries. While Mankading is a statistically rare occurrence in cricket in general, and even rarer in Test cricket, it is the clearest and starkest example of the conflict between legal formalism in cricket and an ideal of the game based on higher or more important ‘ethical’ norms.1