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SIR – In order to conciliate the Australians, we are not to allow the bunching of fieldsmen on the leg side by fast bowlers. It therefore seems reasonable that there should be a limit to the closeness by which the Australians may approach the bat when Grimmett or any other slow bowler is bowling.

The batsman knows that the only way to move the fieldsman is to wait for the loose ball and then deliberately take aim, hoping to ‘score a bull’. It is not quite cricket, for in the mind of the batsman there is always the irritating feeling that while he does not wish to injure, he must remove the man.

In most cases this unlimited ‘in-fielding’ amounts to obstruction, and is just as likely to injure a fieldsman as fast bowling to a leg field is likely to injure a batsman.

E.G. Bisseker

London WI

From Not In My Day, Sir: Cricket Letters to the Daily Telegraph, 2011