Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) gives umpires greater discretion over beamers

Umpires will have greater discretion over what constitutes a dangerous delivery from 2019, Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) announced Wednesday.

The umpires will have more flexibility over whether a beamer - a delivery aimed at the batsman´s head - is deemed to be dangerous.

It marks a major rethink by the Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC), the guardians of the laws of cricket.

In October last year, a new definition of Law 41.7 deemed that any delivery on the full above a batsman´s waist was deemed to be an illegal no-ball that would see the fielding side penalised one run, regardless of the speed with which it was delivered.

The revised ruling also reduced the number of warnings given before a bowler had to be removed from the attack for bowling dangerous deliveries from two to one.

The rules had been changed to discourage deliberate targeting of a batsman but Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) they had received "almost universally negative" feedback that the new sanctions were "overly severe", especially to younger bowlers.