Is it time to remove the bails altogether at the professional level to get some consistency in the age of Zing bails and stumps that light up or is it one of those glorious uncertainties unique to the tradition of this sport which should carry on regardless? Ask any club cricketer and they will bore you with the details of the difficulties posed by getting stumps into the ground, setting up the bails so they sit in place, the problems posed on a windy day when they keep getting blown onto the ground. There are already spring-loaded stumps which can be placed on the ground, whether a match is on turf or a synthetic pitch. If these could have the Zing lights and mimic the current dimensions of the wicket, including the bails, wouldn’t that be a better option than the current set-up? It would remove that awkward minute or so which gets lost in games when the wicket is broken by a stumping or run-out attempt and the square-leg umpire does the “should I or shouldn’t I?” waltz to the pitch. Unfortunately for Carey, he didn’t use enough force with what was a cursory glance at the stumps for the bail to be dislodged. In that instance, the batter was declared not out because neither bail had been dislodged and none of the stumps had been removed from the ground. If cricket can create a wicket which lights up when it’s hit but does not need the bails to dislodge, it would remove this inconsistency from the game. And it would be one less advantage that batters seem to have over bowlers.
