When Dermot Reeve Dropped His Bat In Order To Avoid Getting Dismissed in a County Game | SEE PIC

When Dermot Reeve Dropped His Bat In Order To Avoid Getting Dismissed in County Game | Funny Cricket Incident

By India.com Staff Updated: Feb 10, 2022, 3:34 PM IST

New Delhi: Cricket has witnessed a lot of bizarre incidents but none close to an incident that dates back to 1996 in a game between Warwickshire and Hampshire. Former English cricketer Dermot Reeve in his attempt to not get dismissed started padding up all the balls pitched outside leg-stump. While this is a usual practice for the batters to counter a leg-stump line from the spinner, Reeve took it to a different level altogether.

Every time Reeve padded the ball, he threw his bat away so as to avoid any deflection from his glove and minimise his chances of getting dismissed. Since a batter cannot be dismissed caught behind off the glove if the bat is not in the hand, the ploy seemed to have worked for Reeve. He did this close to 15 times and took 11 overs to get off the mark.

Dermot Reeve pads away a ball which pitches outside leg and throws away his bat Warwickshire v Hampshire, Edgasbton, May 20th 1996. He wanted to avoid a deflection onto his glove - a batsman can only be out caught off a glove if the bat is in the hand. He did this 15 times pic.twitter.com/KYymAMiTnS

Historic Cricket Pictures (@PictureSporting) February 9, 2022

When asked about the bizarre tactic, the former English cricketer is learnt to have said that he took a leaf out of John Emburey's book, who played for Middlesex, Northamptonshire, Western Province, Berkshire and England and applied the same strategy while facing Norman Gifford -- a former left-arm spinner who represented England in 15 Test matches and 2 ODIs.

Following the incident, it was almost taken out of the game and immediately outlawed to prevent anyone else from using the same ploy against their opponent. Hampshire, however, went on to win the match by 122 runs and Reeve's tactics only went to delay the inevitable. No points for guessing that the silly point fielder had a tough time, not because of the ball hitting him but the bat landing close to his feet.

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