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David Lloyd suggests cricket adopt football-style yellow and red cards for discipline.
Mohammed Siraj and Ben Duckett in the 3rd India-England Test (PTI)
Former England cricketer David Lloyd wants cricket to bring in a card system like football, with a yellow card for warning and a red to pull the players out of the game entirely. Lloyd said he has been a proponent of such a rule for a long time, but the cricket administrators have been against it, proposing instead ‘working with the players’ throughout the course of the match and being on the ‘same wavelength’ as them.
The discussion on the Stick To Cricket podcast was extended in light of the recent Anderson-Tendulkar Trophy, which saw several heated moments across the five Tests. There was Mohammed Siraj shoulder-barging Ben Duckett, England being over-aggressive against the Indian players, and the visitors replying with the same, with Shubman Gill’s explosive outburst against Zak Crawley in the Lord’s Test being the most controversial.
“I was always on about yellow cards, red cards,” Lloyd said on the podcast. “Give them a yellow card. Give them a red card. Get them off. And they said, ‘No, you’ve got to try and get on the same wavelength over five days or a four-day game, whatever it is, and try to work with the players.”
In reply, Michael Vaughan asked him how would the rules apply with real-match examples.
“So let’s go back to Lord’s, right? So your yellow card, red card. So Mohammed Siraj gets a 15% fine, doesn’t he, for his little barge? He did, he barged Duckett. Duckett, little Duckett barged on him, didn’t he? So in your system, that’ll be yellow,” Vaughan said.
“Just a yellow card. And everybody on the ground and watching on TV and radio knows exactly what’s happened. He’s on notice. If he steps out of line again, he’s off the field for the game…” Lloyd said.
For the Gill-Crawley incident, where there was finger-pointing from India before Ben Duckett swooped in to go chest-to-chest with the visiting skipper, Lloyd said he’d give both yellow cards.
Then, asked, what would amount as a straight red — no warning, out from the game straightaway — and Lloyd said: “Straight red for body contact… or foul, abusive language, audible. It’s dead simple.”
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