Piers Morgan leads backlash against ‘ultra-woke’ cricket law change as batsmen renamed

Jeremy Vine panellist slams Piers Morgan's comments on Raducanu

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Piers Morgan hit back at a new cricket law which has seen the age-old terms ‘batsmen’ and ‘batsman’ changed to ‘batters’ and ‘batter’ respectively. The Good Morning Britain co-host has called a range of other cricket terminology into question as contrasting viewpoints fly in from all sides of the sport.

The ruling was introduced on Wednesday by Marylebone Cricket Club, owners of Lord’s Cricket Ground and guardians of the laws of the game.

Supposedly, the decision to tweak the existing terminology was made in an effort to reinforce the sport’s status as ‘an inclusive game for all’.

Women’s cricket has been on the up in recent years, with a capacity crowd at Lord’s viewing the women’s World Cup final between England and India in 2017.

Still, a change in the rules regarding a term used regularly within the sport was always going to provoke a mixed reaction from fans, and Morgan is one of those who has taken issue.

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He said on social media: “OK, if we’re going all PC with cricket terminology, what happens to ‘maidens’, ‘third man’, ‘bunny rabbit’, ‘Chinaman’, ‘duck’, ‘flat-track bully’, ‘jockstrap’, ‘Michelle’ (5-for),’Nelson’, ‘Nightwatchman’, ‘Dropped a Dolly’, ‘Twelfth Man’, ‘whites’, & ‘full toss in the crease’?”

The term ‘Chinaman’ referred to by Morgan is used to describe left-arm spin and it has been widely acknowledged as an outdated and offensive description.

In fact, it has broadly been removed from cricket parlance for over a decade.

When it comes to a sport bent on tradition, rule changes are bound to divide opinion.

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Some have long been crying out for cricket to become more inclusive, while others are markedly more traditional regarding a sport conceived in the 16th century.

Geoffrey Boycott, who played over 100 tests for England, has also chimed in on the way cricket has been heading behind the scenes.

He gave a rather colourful speech on Morgan’s Good Morning Britain when the term ‘man of the match’ was reformed to ‘person of the match’.

“Well they’re idiots aren’t they,” he chuckled.

“They must have nothing else to do.

“When the women play, why can’t it be ‘female of the match’?

“If you’ve got nothing else to do but sit in an office and work out that every cricket club in the world has to change that from man of the match, well, you’re a numpty.”

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