Free-hits

When concept of a free-hit was introduced by the ICC to penalise a bowler bowling a no-ball, it was believed that this novel idea would be a great hit among the spectators. With no fear of getting out, batsman can hit the ball out of the ground. However this new idea has not lived upto the hype it generated. In the six games of this India-Australia series so far nine free-hits have been seen. On four occasions the batsmen could not score any run of the free-hit (Tendulkar missed the opportunity not once but twice).On one occasion just a single was scored and on three occasions a couple of runs were scored. Only one boundary has come off a free-hit so far in the series and interestingly it came against a no-ball, which actually was NOT a no-ball. Umpire Suresh Shastri got it all wrong in declaring a delivery from James Hopes a no-ball at Kochi when he had part of his foot clearly behind the crease. The next delivery, a free-hit, was promptly sent out of boundary by Yuvraj Singh.

Australian batsmen and the free-hits

Venue       Date       Bowler     Batsman  Runs
Bangalore  29-Sep-07  Sreesanth   Haddin     0
Bangalore  29-Sep-07  Zaheer      Hopes      2
Nagpur     14-Oct-07  Kartik      Haddin     2

Indian batsmen and the free-hits

Venue      Date      Bowler       Batsman  Runs
Kochi     02-Oct-07   Lee         Tendulkar 0
Kochi     02-Oct-07   Hopes       Yuvraj    6
Kochi     02-Oct-07   Lee         Powar     0
Hyderabad 05-Oct-07   Lee         Tendulkar 0
Baroda    11-Oct-07   Lee         Zaheer    2
Nagpur    14-Oct-07   Lee         Ganguly   1