wear the long white coats which now render them so conspicuous, their dark ones often greatly interfered with the batsman's view of the ball, but now this inconvenience has been done away with, and the batsman can never rightly complain of his sight being obscured by the umpire.
The umpire should stand perfectly still at the moment the ball is delivered; he must not even move his head, as any moving object directly behind the ball, and especially as near to it as the umpire is standing, may distract the batsman's sight from the ball. He must watch the bowler's hindmost foot to see if it touch or cross the bowling crease, in which case it is a 'no ball,' and must almost at the same time watch the bowler's hand and arm to guard against any infringement of the rule against throwing.
The rule with regard to 'no balls' is, 'The bowler shall deliver the ball with one foot on the ground behind the bowling crease, and within the return crease, otherwise the umpire shall call no ball.' The umpire must, therefore, call 'no ball' if the hindmost foot of the bowler is, at the moment of delivery, even touching the bowling or return creases. This rule makes it important that the bowling crease should be neatly and correctly marked. The rule with regard to the bowling crease says that it 'shall be in a line with the stumps, 6 ft. 8 in. in length, &c.,' but says nothing about the width of it. We must, therefore, infer from the words 'in a line' that the bowling crease should not be of greater width than the thickness of the stumps. If it is drawn of this thickness only, it is a very narrow line, but is correct according to a common-sense interpretation of the rules 7 and 11; for supposing, as is often the case, the crease is thicker than the width of the stumps, it would then be a manifest injustice to 'no ball' a bowler because his hindmost foot has just touched the edge of it. These two rules evidently mean that the hindmost foot shall be behind the line of the wicket when the ball is delivered. If the crease is too thick, the foot may just touch it and yet not transgress the spirit of the two rules taken together.
