beamers hitting stumps?

[Acumen]

I have fielded several private questions recently from different parts of the globe about this subject and wonder whether anyone has done a formal calculation.

In every case reported to me the umpire has called No Ball because he thought that it was a beamer - namely (according to law) the ball was not slow and passed the striker standing upright at the popping crease.

These balls all clipped the bails and would have bowled the striker.

My guess is that the umpires concerned must have misjudged either the waist line or the position in relation to the popping crease.

Can anyone provide some mathematics into this situation? Mine is very rusty! Possibly Len Martin's excellent treatise on LBW might shed some light but I am currently away from home.

[gooders]

Colin, when I last did Cardiac Rehab, the nurses told us that the waist is at the level of the navel, which is roughly level with the elbow when standing upright. If stood at the crease, I would have thought that unless it is a slow delivery, anything above waist height would pass well above 28" above ground level after travelling only another 4'

[jaybee]

Jun 9, 2012 11:21:35 GMT gooders said:

Colin, when I last did Cardiac Rehab, the nurses told us that the waist is at the level of the navel, which is roughly level with the elbow when standing upright. If stood at the crease, I would have thought that unless it is a slow delivery, anything above waist height would pass well above 28" above ground level after travelling only another 4'

I must have been psychic:

Nov 14, 2010 12:13:07 GMT jaybee said:

This is developing into an interesting near-medical topic!
I don't think that the line of the belt can be taken because that's inconsistent and something moveable up or down. In particular in somebody (like me) whose waistline has expanded a bit more than it should the belt line tends to slip down towards the hips no matter what happens (short of threatening self-harm by going several notches too tight!).
The top of the hips seems to me to be too low - it's certainly not the waist.
Similarly the bottom of the ribcage is perhaps too high ...
... so ...
... after a period of navel-gazing I've come to the conclusion that the line of the navel (belly button to our coarser participants) is about right as it's roughly halfway between the two.

Of course in practice you still have to estimate - or guess - where that is and where it would be if the striker stood upright at the crease and how high the ball was - or would have been - when it passed over the popping crease. In the end it's the umpire's opinion and I'm glad sometimes that there's no TV replay available.

It means too that there's an element of Law 43 to this....

It might be as well to reiterate also that in my view the most important thing - if you do call - is to make sure that the warning procedure is followed.

[mrsinghIndia]

I always reckoned the waist to be the area from the pelvic bone to the bottom of the rib cage.
Here is what Dictionary.com has to say about this:
waist   [weyst]
noun
1.
the part of the body in humans between the ribs and the hips, usually the narrowest part of the torso.
Free Dictionary says:
waist
1.
a. The part of the human trunk between the bottom of the rib cage and the pelvis.

:o) Of course, it might not be the narrowest part of the torso in most cases.
In the case of most batsmen, the ribcage might be easily discernible where the navel is not.
This, in my view, is consistent with the intent of the Laws where we need to protect the striker from injury at the level of the ribcage and above (head).
There are problems about application, though, which may might have experienced by most.
The striker is not always upright and he is not always at the crease and may have moved around.
This is one of those regulations which can entrap an umpire. Margin for error is great and there is always TV to prove you wrong.
But, as regards those cases where the ball goes on to hit the stumps, I would guess the umpire must have misjudged.
Can't blame them, really.

[rbx]

This is an old thread but it prompted me to do some quick calculations.
I am going to be really sloppy here and talk about speed when I actually mean velocity and blatantly ignore various laws of fluid mechanics.
There are of course an infinite number of permuations of delivery speed and launch angle for the ball to hit the top of middle stump, however, there are only at most two launch angles for a given launch speed.
So for example consider a bowler delivering the ball at 70MPH from a height of 8ft and releasing it on or about the popping crease, the launch angles in radians are approx 0.2 and 1.3, that is a flat delivery and a very high one. The flat delivery will pass the batsman at about 36", the high delivery will pass way over his head albeit at a very low speed - by this time there is only a very small component of horizontal speed.
My waist, when I can find it, is about 44" above ground level so we can assume that the normal flat delivery is definitely not a no ball. Interestingly you would have to deliver the ball at about 40MPH for it to pass over waist height and hit the top of the stumps and this could not be considered a fast ball.
So I think in general for the conventional flat delivery it will never be a no ball on height if it hits the stumps on the full.