INDOOR CRICKET WORLD
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RULE 5. PLAYING EQUIPMENT
- Bats: Bats must be made of wood, and be no larger than 96.5 cm in length and 10.8 cm in width. They must have a suitable bat grip. If an umpire is not satisfied with the suitability of a bat or bat grip, they should not allow it to be used. Note: Bat grips must be of a non-slip material and in good order - most centres offer new bat grips for sale, and will put them on on-site.
- Batting Gloves: A batting glove must completely cover the hands, up to the wrist. A glove must be worn on both hands by each batter. An umpire must not allow play to continue until 2 gloves are worn. Time will be given for any batsman to put on suitable gloves.
- Wicket-Keeper's Gloves: The wicket keeper may wear none, 1 or 2 suitable gloves. They may be regular wicket- keeping or batting gloves, or a combination of both. Baseball style gloves etc are a concession to not being able to properly catch a ball, and are of course not permitted. The gloves in question may only be worn by the wicket keeper in the approved area [See Rule 9D - Wicket Keeper].
- Fielder's Protection: Players may wear protective equipment when fielding. Elbow and knee pads, sporting helmets, face-guards, groin protectors and safety glasses are all permissible. Note: The "official" rules of the AICF seem to indicate fielders may wear gloves by including them in their list of permissible protective equipment. This is wrong - the wicket-keeper is the only fielder allowed to wear gloves. However, if a fielder had a compelling medical reason to wear some form of protective glove, the centre management would have to be approached before the game for approval, to avoid dissent amongst the players during the game.
- Balls: All centres supply recognised Indoor Cricket balls for each match. Teams or players cannot of course supply their own. Any person or team found substituting, "roughing-up", picking at the seam, or attempting to reshape the ball in any way will be penalised 10 runs for ball tampering. Shining the ball on clothing is the only acceptable "tampering" allowed.
- Equipment not in immediate use (eg. gloves, elbow pads and protectors) must be placed outside the court until required - for example, some players put their box behind the non-striker's stumps as they prepare to bowl, and some wicket-keepers discard one glove and throw it into the corner of the court. This is not allowed. Players will be warned to remove unused protective equipment immediately. Should they refuse to do so (and I can think of no reason why they would refuse), they are to be penalised 5 runs.
- In Australia, the Stumps are all "Wilkins" style collapsible stumps. They are either free-standing (almost universally) or bolted to the floor (which I think would be extremely dangerous). The base plate is considered to be part of the stumps, so a ball hitting the base plate, which results in the bails falling off, counts as a hit to the stumps.
- Bails are wooden or plastic and are tied to the stumps, mainly to protect wicket-keepers from being hit in the face.