What is Danger Area on a Cricket Pitch?

In what is not a rare occurrence during a cricket match, as many as three Mumbai Indians bowlers in the ongoing Indian Premier League 2023 match against Lucknow Super Giants were handed out a warning each by on-field umpires for running/treading on the “danger area” of the Ekana Cricket Stadium pitch.

While it was leg-spinner Piyush Chawla who was initially warned during the ninth over of  Lucknow’s innings, overseas pacers Jason Behrendorff (13th Over) and Chris Jordan (15th Over) were also reprimanded for the same later.

It is worth of a mention that a player is handed out warnings only a couple of times for this particular offence, and is then immediately taken off the attack after the umpire informs the fielding team captain of the third time offence committed by the same player.

What is Danger Area on a Cricket Pitch?

It is an area of the pitch where the bowlers are not supposed to tread/run/walk after their delivery stride. A bowler sometimes (voluntarily or involuntarily) runs on this “danger area” during his/her post-delivery follow through.

This area is near the five feet distance on either side of the popping crease of the pitch, in the vicinity of a batter’s front foot. Approximately of a two-feet width, when a bowler repeatedly treads in this area, his/her footmarks creates patches on the pitch.

Thus, when ball lands on these patches created by the bowler(s) footsteps, it has a tendency to behave uncharacteristically. While it may help the spinners to extract some unexpected degree of turn when their deliveries pitch on these rough patches, a pacer’s delivery may stay low or the ball might arrive at a relatively slower pace than what the batter might have usually expected.

Since these change in pitch conditions is deemed unfair for the team batting later on, this particular area is termed as the “Danger area” of the pitch, and falls under the ‘Unfair Play’ category of the MCC Law (41.13. 1).

Not only a bowler, but batters too, are not allowed to run on the danger area while rotating the strike. However, batters are usually careful in this respect for obvious reasons.

Can the Danger area change a match outcome?

Sometimes the bowlers deliberately try to create these footmarks on the pitch especially in Test matches to make lives difficult for the batters, particularly while facing the spinners.

As these patches are created by repeatedly treading on this very area of the pitch, they are not likely to hand a significant advantage to the fielding side during T20s. However, they might have a say in a match outcome in Test cricket.

This is the very reason one would always see fielders taking a huge leap from one side of the pitch to the other when changing their fielding positions.