Cricket’s laws have quietly been rewritten. You’ll notice the changes
Cricket’s lawmakers rarely earn a pat on the back. This time they mostly deserve one.
The MCC’s 2026 edition of the Laws of Cricket arrives in October, the first rewrite since 2022, carrying 73 meaningful changes. There is no squeezing them all into one column, so let’s focus on what matters most at the top level.
Mehidy Hasan Miraz of Bangladesh is beaten by the boundary rope. Getty Images
And spare a thought for community cricket because all of it lands at club and junior grounds too, often without Snicko or DRS.
Start with the headline act: Law 19.5.2 and the death of the bunny hop. A fielder who leaps from beyond the rope now gets one airborne touch of the ball, and after that, the boundary becomes a hard line: every landing until the ball is dead must be inside the field of play.
The loophole from old catches was smart but farcical and to most fans felt like a con. The ICC already plays this way, so the lawbook and the international game are back in lockstep.
Better still, the Laws suit the Spirit of Cricket, and a catch that looks like a circus trick has no place in the game.
Law 19.8 finally tells us what an overthrow actually is. For decades everyone assumed they knew, while the law itself stayed vague and often contradicted expectations. Now it’s codified: an overthrow is an attempt to hit the stumps to stop runs or effect a run out, and a misfield is neither.
A solid, overdue clarification though still subjective to umpires.
The best change in the book is Law 20.1.1.1 and the new definition of “finally settled”. I am not usually a fan of handing umpires more subjectivity, but the old requirement that the ball be settled only in the bowler’s or wicket-keeper’s hands was never comprehensive enough.
Now the ball can be finally settled in any fielder’s hands, or stationary on the ground with nobody treating it as live. That is plain common sense: it slams the door on baseball-style trick plays that kept the ball technically alive while everyone had mentally moved on, and it keeps the game true to its spirit.
I love baseball but keep it on the diamond and off the pitch.
Law 27.3.1 tidies up the wicket-keeper’s position. Keepers whose gloves crept level with the stumps during the run-up were technically bowling no balls while gaining nothing. Now the keeper must only be wholly behind the stumps once the ball is released, matching the wording for fielders.
The law was written to stop foul play behind the sticks, and the newwording keeps that guard up while finally reflecting how keeping actually works.
Bangladesh tail-ender Taijul Islam's left shoe bobbles onto the stumps, dismissing him hit wicket. nna\zgates
The hit wicket amendments in Laws 35.1.1 and 35.2 are fair dinkum updates: a batter still off balance from their shot who stumbles into the stumps is out, while a batter knocked onto them by a fielder is protected. Sensible, both.
Law 22.1.3 earns a huge tick too. A ball that bounces over the head of a striker standing upright at the popping crease is now a wide, not a no ball. That is the better fit: a ball over your head is unreachable, the very definition of a wide, and the switch puts four modes of dismissal in play instead of the no ball’s three.
In an interesting twist, the MCC now finds itself in alignment with the Victorian Sub-District Cricket Association (VSDCA).
Now for the gripe. The MCC, custodians and communicators of the Laws, has swapped gendered language for “their”, a plural doing a singular’s job. Read 19.5.2 itself: “A fielder who is not in contact with the ground is considered to be grounded beyond the boundary if, prior to their first contact with the ball…”
Let me be crystal clear: the objection is not to inclusive language, which is a worthy goal that Law 4.1 handles better in renaming men’s, women’s and junior balls as Sizes 1, 2 and 3. The objection is to imprecision.
Laws demand linguistic exactness, and these Laws are translated into many languages where plural-for-singular creates genuine ambiguity.
Singular options like “one’s” exist in many contexts, and previous codes managed “his/her”. This is a step in the wrong direction.
Australian cricket star Steve Smith. Getty
Clarity of law, especially when a sport is as complex as cricket already is, is for everyone whether the person plays and/or simply enjoys watching the game.
The frustration is sharpened because the MCC clearly understands the principle. Because of how the word “pitch” is understood in different languages, a linguistic change was necessary so that all have a consistent, world-wide understanding.
This had resulted in the laws being stripped out every use of “pitch” (along with pitched and pitching) in instances that do not mean the physical space of 22 yards between the stumps: the ball now “lands” or “bounces”, and stumps are “positioned”.
That is how you write laws for a global game: one word, one meaning, everywhere.
None of these changes is perfect. But together they send the game in the right direction, which is more than most rewrites can claim.
