Mitchell Starc Offers Alternative To Non-Striker’s Run-Out After ‘I Am Not Deepti’ Incident Involving Jos Buttler

Despite numerous attempts by the International Cricket Council (ICC), the ‘non-striker run-out’ remains a questionable form of dismissal in the cricketing spectrum. When India’s Deepti Sharma dismissed England’s Charlie Dean in the manner, her action was portrayed in the bad light. Australia pacer Mitchell Starc, in a match against England, gave Jos Buttler a warning over not leaving his crease early while saying “I am not Deepti”. Starc remains someone who is not a fan of the dismissal but also wants batters to remain inside the crease. He has now offered an alternative to this dismissal.

“Why not take it out of the hands of interpretation, and make it black-and-white?” Starc told The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald. “Every time the batter leaves the crease before the front foot lands, dock them a run. There’s no grey area then.”

“And in T20 cricket where runs are so handy at the back end and games can be decided by one, two, three runs all the time, if all of a sudden you get docked 20 runs because a batter’s leaving early, you’re going to stop doing it, aren’t you?

No-ball used to be a decision that was purely taken by the line-umpires before but has now gone to the third-umpire. Having seen no-balls now being reviewed using cameras, Starc wants a similar approach to be taken with regards to non-strikers leaving their crease early.

“It’s harder to do down the levels of cricket, but particularly in international cricket, there are always going to be cameras square-on for the front foot and for the run-outs. So, why not? And if it either makes the batters think about it – or stops it occurring – isn’t that a good thing?”

“Then there’s no stigma,” Starc said. “It’s taken away from the decision to have to run someone out or think about it. If it’s blatant, it is a different story, but I feel like that is at least completely black-and-white.”

Starc had decided to warn Buttler in the recent T20I against England but it wasn’t the first instance of doing so for him. He also revealed what was the conversation he had with Buttler in that moment.

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“I’ve warned batters plenty of times, [Buttler] is not the first occasion,” Starc said. “I warned probably seven Kiwi batters in those ODI games in the top end – some were two metres outside their crease. As I said to Jos, I could never see myself doing it [running a non-striker out], but it doesn’t mean that you should then feel free to leave your crease early.”

Many players still aren’t keen to dismiss batters in this manner, but, with a high-profile tournament like T20 World Cup Super 12s coming up, the fine line between right and wrong with regards to the dismissal might get blurry.