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Bowlers turn to jelly in the search for gripping stuff

Dirt in the pocket was the way Michael Atherton once chose to keep his hands dry and keep moisture off the ball. Liquid hand powder by Physio Sport, part of Elida Fabergé, does the sweat-mopping job very efficiently, and the makers are wondering if it is legal.

They have been supplying their product range to county clubs (no names, no pack drill) and, as this peculiar gel-like substance has been shown to have potential, Physio Sport have written to the International Cricket Council for guidance.

There are no regulations against players carrying lotions or sun-cream in their pockets, and Clive Hitchcock, of the ICC, said: ``I'll need to get one or two people to look at it, because the situation is something we haven't encountered before.''

When Grip, containing aluminium, is rubbed on to a damp hand, it absorbs small quantities of moisture quickly and should improve grip on the new ball. If only England had known earlier . . .

Television broadcasters say that no camera stump has yet been stolen off the pitch since they were introduced more than eight years ago in Australia.

The World Cup umpires have been officially spared the unwanted responsibility of safekeeping these items, worth more than £5,000 each.

In the past umpires had to guard them like crown jewels during post-match crowd invasions. John Holder was once knocked to the ground, and there have been several quite nasty attempted snatches.

One World Cup umpire said: ``It's not up to us any more. We don't want pushing and shoving around while some idiot, who's had 26 pints, tries to wrestle the stump off us.''

This summer television staff have been discreetly replacing the camera stumps with normal ones near the end of play, usually during the day's last drinks break.

Radio stumps have been stolen from the crease, and there is a story from Australia, possibly apocryphal, that a thief was traced to a bar near the ground because the broadcast staff could work out his movements by listening to him through the appropriated stump.

Crowd behaviour, under scrutiny already in the World Cup, is mild in Britain when compared with the occasional excesses of the Subcontinent. Courtney Walsh, in his new autobiography, Heart of The Lion, recounts an unpleasant experience during a West Indies tour of Pakistan. The usually unflappable Richie Richardson became incensed when he discovered that a missile thrown near him on to the outfield was a bag of excrement.

Other items thrown at games in India or Pakistan include paper darts, rotten fruit, stones, lump of concrete, a steel bolt, glass beer bottles and an animal skull. In New Zealand, Stuart Law was once struck by a sauce bottle, still full.