What is a demerit point in cricket?
A demerit point is given to someone in international cricket who commits an offence that breaches the code of conduct for players and player support personal.The code was first introduced by the International Cricket Council (ICC) in September 2016. Offences that can lead to players and support staff being given demerit points include dissent, abuse of equipment, foul language and public criticism of officials.During a two-year period, a player's demerit points are converted into suspension points.Two suspension points mean a ban for either one Test, two one-day internationals or two Twenty-20 internationals, depending on which of those come first for the player or member of support staff in question.Demerit points last on a player's record for two years from the date of the offence and are expunged upon expiry.A player given demerit points can also by fined some - or all - of their match fee.Demerit points are given out depending on the severity of the offence, which are ranked from level one to level four, with four the most serious.Level one incidents are given one or two demerit points. Level two incidents are given three or four demerit points. Level three incidents are given five or six demerit points and level four incidents are given seven or eight demerit points.Eight demerit points equate to four suspension points, meaning missing either two Test matches or four white-ball internationals.The points system for offences is similar to the process in Formula1 for drivers, with suspensions coming from an accumulation of points, as well those points having an expiry date.In 2017, India spinner Ravindra Jadeja missed a Test match against Sri Lanka after accumulating six demerit points within a 24-month period.This article is the latest from BBC Sport's Ask Me Anything team.
What is Ask Me Anything?
Ask Me Anything is a service dedicated to answering your questions.We want to reward your time by telling you things you do not know and reminding you of things you do.The team will find out everything you need to know and be able to call upon a network of contacts including our experts and pundits.We will be answering your questions from the heart of the BBC Sport newsroom, and going behind the scenes at some of the world's biggest sporting events.Our coverage will span the BBC Sport website, app, social media and YouTube accounts, plus BBC TV and radio.
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The Independent
25 minutes ago
- The Independent
Heather Knight aiming for World Cup as she recovers from hamstring injury
Former England cricket captain Heather Knight believes she is on track to be fit for the World Cup as she prepares to capitalise on her injury misfortune to cheer on the Lionesses at Euro 2025. The 34-year-old's summer was ruined by a significant hamstring tendon issue suffered during last month's T20 clean sweep against the West Indies. Unable to feature in the upcoming series against India, she has instead booked a holiday to Switzerland and plans to watch Sarina Wiegman's England launch their European Championship title defence with Group D fixtures against France and the Netherlands in Zurich on July 5 and 9. This year's ICC Women's Cricket World Cup in India is scheduled to begin on September 30, with England's opening match coming against South Africa on October 3. 'That World Cup is what I'm aiming for, it's what I've got my sights set on,' Knight told the PA news agency 'There's always bumps in the road with rehab but hopefully everything goes smoothly and I can be back early September and get a bit of cricket in before the World Cup. 'Things are tracking pretty well to hopefully be fit for that. It's healing well. 'We're not gonna rush things. It's a pretty gnarly injury: I ripped off the tendon quite well from the bone, so I have to be a little bit careful coming back.' Knight, who sat out three subsequent ODIs against the Windies and is also missing London Spirit's title defence in this season's Hundred, was on crutches for two weeks but avoided surgery. She is determined to make the most of her enforced absence amid the 'extremely dull' rehabilitation process. 'I'm going to Switzerland next week to watch the Lionesses play, so that's something I wouldn't have been able to do if I was playing cricket,' said Knight. 'I always love watching women's sport and it's the opportunity to go to a pretty cool country. 'I know a few of the players loosely: I've done a few bits with Leah (Williamson, England captain) and come across a few of the girls at events. 'It's really cool to see what they've done for women's sport in this country. 'Hopefully they can be successful because that Euros win in the UK (in 2022) was a really special moment for women's sport in this country and changed the face of football.' It has been difficult few months for Knight. She was stripped of the England captaincy following nine years in the role in the wake of an Ashes humiliation in Australia before sustaining the long-term injury in the early weeks of the new era under head coach Charlotte Edwards. 'The Ashes was pretty tough; I was sad that things had ended like that but the ECB decided they wanted me to have a fresh start and that was their decision and completely fine,' she said of the captaincy, which passed to Nat Sciver-Brunt. 'I'm still very motivated to keep playing for England.' Alongside England men's captain Ben Stokes, Knight has given her name to a new national state school competition, which will launch in 2026 and conclude with finals at Lord's. The Barclays Knight-Stokes Cup – named after two of England's greatest state-educated cricketers and the brainchild of another ex-England skipper, Michael Vaughan – aims to drive state school participation in the sport. 'It's really important that we keep making cricket accessible,' said Knight. 'I'm really proud to put my name to it.' :: Schools can sign up for the inaugural Knight-Stokes Cup at
BBC News
an hour ago
- BBC News
Jofra Archer: How England bowler made his return to Test cricket
Saqib Mahmood is one of Jofra Archer's closest friends in cricket."With Jof the easiest thing for him to have done is just gone purely white ball," Mahmood tells BBC Sport."He'd have been financially better off and had all of that. But I could always tell he wanted to play Test cricket. I just knew it."Mahmood could be proven right next week after Archer was called into England's squad for the second Test against India. After an injury-ravaged four and a half years, Archer is back on cricket's biggest has been a story of cruel blows, hard work and false starts and one that results in the most intriguing question of all. Just what can be expected of Archer the Test bowler in 2025? 'Like a £100m signing – a cheat code' With the passing of time, it is easy to forget just how good Jofra Archer was in his first international summer in 2019.A World Cup winner and an Ashes weapon, he seemingly had it just 24, he was bowling knuckle balls in a super over to win a 50-over World Cup against New Zealand, delivering one of the great spells of fast bowling to Steve Smith against Australia on Test debut and swinging it around corners at Headingley to take six wickets and make Ben Stokes' miracle took 22 wickets in four matches in that Ashes series. By his seventh Test he had taken three five-wicket hauls - as many as Andrew Flintoff managed in his entire Test career."It was like what it must feel like in football for guys to go and spend £100m on a player and bosh you've got him straight up," England team-mate Chris Woakes recalls. "What was quite nice is other teams didn't know what he was capable of because they hadn't seen him."It felt like a bit of a cheat code. As soon as I saw him bowl I thought he was going to dominate international cricket because he is a serious talent, especially for such a young guy."But if Archer's first summer was the debut album that went platinum, the following winter was the difficult second two wickets came across two Tests in a series defeat in New he bowled 42 overs in one innings of the first Test, captain Joe Root said he had to learn "every spell counts". "You really have got to run in and use that extra pace to your advantage," Root had a new toy but were reading from the wrong instruction manual. An injury 'burden' Next came the injuries which have dogged the career of England's most exciting bowler for a generation, plus a cut hand cleaning a fish tank and a breach of the Covid-19 bubble after an unauthorised trip in Archer's right elbow on the tour of South Africa was revealed to be a stress fracture in early came back that summer and battled through the winter but the third match of series in India in February 2021 remains his most recent underwent surgery on the elbow that May, did so again the following December when the issue was not resolved and then sustained a stress fracture in his back in the elbow issue returned again in 2023, Archer's career at the most ominous of crossroads."I remember the 2022 T20 World Cup [which England won in Australia] me and Jof were both in Dubai in a hotel watching the final," says Mahmood, who was also out injured at that time."We were both a bit like 'we would love to be there'."When you watched the boys win a final and all of that, you don't have to say anything, but you just know, from each other's faces."Archer has said he felt like a "burden" during the absence."I've seen a few comments, people saying 'he's on the longest paid holiday I've ever seen'," said Archer."You try to not let it get to you but you can ignore 100 of them but sometimes that 101st is the straw that breaks the camel's back." 'Criticism gives him another gear' – the long road back The result was months of rehab, completed at Sussex but mostly back home in family, dogs and two parrots - Jessie and James, named after Pokemon characters - live just 150m or so from the idyllic Windward Cricket would be seen in the nets there, or at the island's famous Test ground the Kensington Oval. On occasions, Mahmood flew out to train with his England team-mate while both were coming back from similar injuries."He might not be vocal about it or he might not give off that impression, but Jof has very high standards," Mahmood says."We had net batters who used to come in and one brought a tripod to set his camera up."We were a bit like 'you what' and I could just see Jof as well. He just cranked it up straight away. As soon as you give him a sniff of letting him do something, he does it."England's management hinted at regrets in initial attempts to rush Archer back and have since developed carefully-laid plan, the work of England's elite pace bowling coach Neil has had a PDF mapping out every match he would play up until his Test return this summer - and an Ashes winter beyond. He has hit the vast majority to this playing only white-ball cricket, neither back nor elbow have troubled Archer since he returned at the T20 World Cup last year. At that tournament no-one took more wickets for England in their run to the semi-finals, while a hostile spell at Lord's against Australia in a one-day international in September suggested the magic was still is not to say it has been a serene return. There have been poor days and, with expectations still remarkably high, criticism too."People are just very quick to judge and they just go from one extreme to the other with Jof and I think that's purely because they know how good he is at his best," Mahmood says."He'll run in and he'll bowl 150kph and if he goes for runs, people will look at the runs and if he runs in and bowls mid-135s people will talk about his speed not necessarily his figures."It definitely drives him."He's the kind of guy, even for me, I won't joke around with."We always have a bit of a laugh, about each others' calves and all of that, and then it just ends when he says 'what's your fastest ball?' and then there's no comeback from that." Some of the loudest criticism came in April this year when Archer bowled the most expensive spell in Indian Premier League history – four wicketless overs for 76 bowling coach at Rajasthan Royals was the former New Zealand bowler Shane Bond - another who knows a thing or two about trying to come back after serious injuries."For anyone who has a day like that, it hurts," Bond says."There's no doubt he was hurting a bit. I had those days myself and your ego takes a bit of a hit."I think that's a credit to how quickly he bounced back. He was hurt but brushed it off and then just got back to it. He got back to the training ground, trained brilliantly, was really focused and knew what he wanted to do and had to do."Archer finished the IPL as the Royals joint-highest you exclude that afternoon on a flat pitch in Hyderabad, his economy throughout the rest of the tournament would have ranked among the best for pace bowlers in the competition… 'He still has an aura' – how good can Archer 2.0 be in Tests? The unknown question now is what sort of red-ball bowler can Archer be. Is he the same electric seamer that stepped out at Lord's in whites in 2019?"That pace and that hostility that he has are all still there," Bond says."You always lose probably a couple of kph at the top end when you've gone through that back surgery, but he is certainly fast enough to cause problems."Predicting red-ball form from white-ball results is notoriously difficult, some might say pace drops across his spells in one-day international cricket – interestingly not as significantly as it did before – but part of that is due to him bowling an increased number of slower balls at the more significantly, Archer bowls almost half as many outswingers in ODIs since his latest comeback than he did in 2019 – a delivery which is crucial in a fast bowler's counter that by saying Archer was never an outswing bowler. Another point made is that it is simply a result of his diet of white-ball cricket, where a pace bowler tries to give a right-hander as little width as possible."He starts just outside the stumps and it swings back in," Bond says."He certainly has the ability to turn his wrist around and swing the ball out, but I don't think you're gonna get a big banana outswinger."People get carried away with trying to swing it both ways like Jimmy Anderson, who was just a legend. But as long as he can move the ball, that's the critical thing."Bond points to Archer's spells with the new ball in the IPL as the biggest tell for Archer's red-ball future. There he would attack the top of off stump with pace and nip while putting the variations on the back burner, as he would with the red ball. "That's where he's extremely dangerous because he does swing the ball," Bond says. "He gets bounce and even in the IPL and on good wickets, he was generally knocking over good players and causing problems."That's the sort of player you're looking for in red-ball cricket."He also has that psychological impact because people know what he is capable of."Jofra has that sort of aura about him. When he gets it right there's something just unique about the way he does things."But the biggest unknown remains whether Archer's body can withhold the strain of cricket's longest captain Pat Cummins made his Test debut as an 18-year-old but did not play again for five years because of a series of injuries, including back stress fractures. He has gone on to become one of the all-time greats in the second part of his though, managed only eight more Tests after his back was fused with titanium wire in a bid to fix the issues in 2003."The biggest thing is the worry factor," Bond says."He's had the combination of back and elbow, so the biggest risk for both is that the increase in load and intensity and for both of those areas."I can't speak for Jof but for me that never went away with my back. For the rest of my career when I bowled I always worried that it might go ping because you knew the repercussions if it did."Archer's preparations for a Test return began in earnest after returning to Sussex after this year's bowling with a guard on his thumb to protect an injury that ruled him out of the white-ball series against West Indies, Archer began with one spell per day followed by a rest, then two spells and eventually bowling on back-to-back days in the nets, largely to Sussex bowling coach James on 22 June, came the moment Archer had been waiting for – his first first-class match for 1,500 for Sussex against Durham he took 1-32 across 18 overs – the most he had bowled in a match for more than four Archer described the day he returned with the ball as "the longest" he has ever had, but seemed to be referring to the lifeless Chester-le-Street pitch rather than the tiredness in his legs."He threatened the right-handers outside edge," former England bowler Steven Finn says."Everything wasn't coming in as maybe we saw in the white-ball cricket."What I saw was the ball holding its line to right-handed batters, which is a really positive sign to see his wrist right behind the ball."It wouldn't be possible for that to happen if it wasn't."That England have opted to recall Archer after only one innings – Sussex did not bowl in the second innings of the Durham draw – shows how highly they rate him."I just think he's one of those bowlers, and there's not many, who you get generally excited about watching," Bond says."Whether it be [India bowler Jasprit] Bumrah or Jofra, there's a level of excitement because they just make it look easy."He adds: "Just temper the expectations."I still think it's going to be exciting to watch him bowl and I still think he'll do something awesome but just realise that it's never easy coming back from an injury like that."He's just expected to blow teams apart and he could. But it's just nice to be great to see him back in the whites."
BBC News
2 hours ago
- BBC News
State schools to play cricket at Lord's ground in new tournament
A new tournament, specifically for state school pupils, has been launched at Lord's cricket ground by former England captains Heather Knight and Michael Knight-Stokes Cup will be a T20 competition contested next summer via a series of knockout regional qualifiers with the finals to be staged on the main ground at Lord' tournament will be for school pupils in the Year 10 age group with separate events for boys and is part of the game's wider efforts to increase opportunities for state school children to play cricket, following a critical report about elitism in the game. A 2023 report by the Independent Commission for Equity in Cricket (ICEC) reported "elitism and class-based discrimination" in the game was partly down to a lack of cricket in state schools and a talent pathway structurally aligned to private commission said it was "alarmed" by repeated references to "the bank of mum and dad", with respondents to their study stressing the importance of financial support from parents in determining their report recommended the historic Eton versus Harrow school matches should not be played at Lord's - but objections by some members of the MCC led to a compromise in which that match - and the annual university match between Oxford and Cambridge - will remain at the ground until at least 2027, when there will be a review. The Knight-Stokes Cup will be held in the summer of 2026 which schools can sign up to named after Knight and the current England captain Ben Stokes, both of whom learned to play at state Cricket Club (MCC) Foundation will oversee the organisation of the cup in conjunction with regional cricket competition will also provide opportunities for potentially talented cricketers to be spotted at an early age.A number of independent schools have agreed to provide grounds and facilities for state schools to play matches.
