Obstructing the field in cricket: what Law 37 says and every batter it has dismissed

Obstructing the field is the rarest way to get out in cricket. A batter is out obstructing the field if they deliberately get in the fielding side’s way, deliberately distract them, or handle the ball without permission. The key word in the Law is wilfully. An accident is not an offence, and the umpire has to decide what was in the batter’s head.

Across 4.17 million deliveries of men’s Test, ODI, T20I and Indian T20 League cricket in the ball-by-ball archive, it has happened 15 times. That is once every 278,000 balls. Angkrish Raghuvanshi’s dismissal in April 2026 was the fourth in the Indian T20 League’s history, and it sent the MCC to the keyboard within four days.

What obstructing the field means in cricket

The offence sits in Law 37 of the Laws of Cricket, and it has four separate limbs. Most people know only the first.

Clause	What it covers
37.1.1	Either batter wilfully obstructs or distracts the fielding side, by word or action, while the ball is in play
37.1.2	The striker wilfully strikes the ball with a hand not holding the bat while receiving the delivery
37.3.1	Wilful obstruction or distraction by either batter stops the striker being caught, on a delivery that is not a no ball
37.4	Either batter uses the bat or their body to return the ball to a fielder without the fielding side’s consent

Law 37.2 is the release valve. A batter is not out if the obstruction or distraction was accidental, if it was done to avoid injury, or if the striker was lawfully making a second strike to guard the wicket. Under Law 37.6 the bowler gets no credit for the wicket, which is why the scorecard carries the words with no bowler’s name beside them.

The fielding side has to appeal. Nothing here is given automatically, and in every case below an umpire had to form a view about intent from two seconds of video.

How rare is obstructing the field?

Rarer than anything else that still happens. Running every men’s Test, ODI, T20I and Indian T20 League ball-by-ball record through one count gives the full ladder, and obstructing the field sits at the bottom of the dismissals that occur more than once in a generation.

Dismissal	Number	One every
Caught	76,871	54 balls
Bowled	24,205	172 balls
LBW	13,292	313 balls
Run out	8,292	503 balls
Stumped	3,147	1,325 balls
Hit wicket	119	35,053 balls
Obstructing the field	15	278,093 balls

Three modes sit below it, and each has appeared exactly once in that entire sample: handled the ball, timed out and hit the ball twice. Read against the run out, the number is stark. Obstructing the field is a run out with intent attached, and the archive finds the intent about once for every 550 run outs. The nine ways of getting out in cricket are nothing like evenly used.

The Indian T20 League is where it happens most. Four of the 15 fall there, in 296,000 balls, which is one every 74,000 deliveries against one every 199,000 in T20Is and one every 1.7 million in Tests. Batters run harder and turn more sharply in a competition where every single is fought over.

Why Angkrish Raghuvanshi was given out

Kolkata were batting against Lucknow at the Ekana Stadium on Sunday 26 April 2026 when Raghuvanshi pushed Prince Yadav to mid-on and set off in the fifth over. Cameron Green sent him back. Raghuvanshi had already left the off side, ran back down the middle of the pitch, then turned towards the leg side and dived, and the throw hit him. He was given out, argued with the umpires, hit the boundary cushion with his bat on the way off and flung his helmet into the dugout. He was later fined 20 per cent of his match fee with one demerit point under Article 2.2 of the IPL Code of Conduct, for abuse of cricket equipment, and admitted the offence.

The MCC published a clarification on 30 April 2026 and backed the umpires under Law 37.1.1. Its reasoning is the part worth keeping, because it kills the argument almost every viewer made that night: “a batter who changes direction while running, particularly one who changes direction to run on the pitch, or takes any other route that would not be the quickest way to the other end, is making a wilful act.”

The second half of the statement is blunter still. “There has been some suggestion that Raghuvanshi should not have been given out because he would have made his ground even if the throw had not hit him. However, this is not a consideration.” Whether the run out was likely does not enter into it. Only whether the movement was deliberate does, unless the obstruction prevented a catch.

Obstructing the field in the Indian T20 League

Four batters have gone this way in the league, and the two most recent went the same way as each other.

Batter	Team	Opponent	Date
Yusuf Pathan	Kolkata	Pune	15 May 2013
Amit Mishra	Delhi	Hyderabad	8 May 2019
Ravindra Jadeja	Chennai	Rajasthan	12 May 2024
Angkrish Raghuvanshi	Kolkata	Lucknow	26 Apr 2026

Jadeja’s, at Chepauk, is the same picture as Raghuvanshi’s two years later. He had gone halfway down for a second, Ruturaj Gaikwad did not want it, Sanju Samson’s throw came in and hit him, and the third umpire concluded he had watched the ball and changed direction. Two of the four cases in the competition’s history are one mechanism, and both times the instinct in the stands was that a batter running back to safety cannot be at fault. The Law disagrees.

Every batter dismissed obstructing the field in international cricket

Sixteen men have been given out this way in international cricket. Two sources are needed to build that list and neither is complete on its own. The published lists miss two associate T20Is from 2024 that sit in the ball-by-ball archive, and the archive misses two that the published lists hold.

Batter	Team	Format	Date
Len Hutton	England	Test	Aug 1951
Rameez Raja	Pakistan	ODI	20 Nov 1987
Mohinder Amarnath	India	ODI	22 Oct 1989
Inzamam-ul-Haq	Pakistan	ODI	6 Feb 2006
Mohammad Hafeez	Pakistan	ODI	21 Mar 2013
Anwar Ali	Pakistan	ODI	27 Nov 2013
Ben Stokes	England	ODI	5 Sep 2015
Jason Roy	England	T20I	23 Jun 2017
Hassan Rasheed	Maldives	T20I	23 Jan 2019
Xavier Marshall	USA	ODI	8 Dec 2019
Danushka Gunathilaka	Sri Lanka	ODI	10 Mar 2021
Razmal Shigiwal	Austria	T20I	10 Jul 2022
Mushfiqur Rahim	Bangladesh	Test	6 Dec 2023
Abass Gbla	Sierra Leone	T20I	17 Dec 2023
Mohamed Azzam	Maldives	T20I	23 Oct 2024
Htet Lin Oo	Myanmar	T20I	16 Nov 2024

Only two of the sixteen came in a Test, seventy-two years apart. Hutton top-edged a sweep off the offspinner Athol Rowan at the Oval, feared the ball was dropping on his stumps and knocked it away, and in doing so stopped the wicketkeeper Russell Endean taking the catch. Mushfiqur Rahim did almost exactly the same thing on the first day of the Mirpur Test in 2023, defending Kyle Jamieson under his eyes and shoving the ball away from the stumps with his left glove.

Pakistan account for four of the eight one-day dismissals. Three women have also been given out this way in internationals, Thirush Kamini of India among them, at Vijayawada in November 2016.

India’s only case, and the man who did both

Mohinder Amarnath remains the only Indian given out obstructing the field in international cricket. It happened in the Nehru Cup at Ahmedabad on 22 October 1989, when he kicked the ball away as Ravi Ratnayeke and Arjuna Ranatunga converged on it.

He had already been given out handled the ball against Australia four years earlier, which makes him the only cricketer to have suffered both dismissals in internationals. That double is now impossible to repeat, and the reason is the next section.

What happened to handled the ball

Handled the ball used to be a dismissal in its own right. The 2017 Code deleted it and folded it into Law 37, taking the number of ways to get out from ten to nine. What used to be handled the ball is now clause 37.1.2 or 37.4, depending on the circumstances.

That is why Mushfiqur was given obstructing the field for an act every previous generation would have called handling the ball. It is also why lists of these dismissals disagree with each other so often. Several outlets reported him as the eleventh player out this way in a Test and the first in 22 years, which only works if the seven Test handled-the-ball dismissals are counted in and Michael Vaughan’s in 2001 is treated as the previous one. The table above counts obstructing the field only, which is why it shows two.

The rule changes on 1 October 2026

The MCC has issued a new edition of the Laws, the fourth edition of the 2017 Code, carrying 73 changes and coming into force on 1 October 2026. Two of the 73 are in Law 37.

Clause	Change
37.1.3	New. A batter who drops or throws the bat to hit the ball, or to avoid being dismissed, can be given out obstructing the field
37.5.2	New. When a batter is out obstructing the field, the fielding captain chooses whether the new batter or the surviving batter takes strike

The second will change how the dismissal is used. Obstruction is often an attempt to get a particular batter on strike, and from October the side that was obstructed decides that question instead. It is the same remedy the same edition applies to deliberate short running, and it takes to three the places in the Laws where players on the field choose who faces next.

The first looks like housekeeping and has an odd consequence. Letting go of the bat is about to appear in two Laws at once. Throw it deliberately at the ball and it is obstructing the field. Lose it accidentally and let it break your own wicket and it is hit wicket. Same object, same broken stumps, and the only thing separating them is what the umpire thinks you meant.

Three men have been out both ways

Obstructing the field and hit wicket are the two dismissals that turn on what a batter did with their own body rather than on the bowling, and only three men in the ball-by-ball archive have been given out both ways: Inzamam-ul-Haq, Mohammad Hafeez and Ravindra Jadeja. Jadeja’s hit wicket came against Deccan in 2012, off Dale Steyn, twelve years before Samson’s throw found him at Chepauk.

What the pair have in common is that neither is credited to anyone, which is also true of the run out and of the mankad. In a game that keeps meticulous account of who took what, these are the wickets that belong to nobody.

Two neighbouring Laws are worth reading alongside this one. Law 37.3.1 excludes the no ball, so a batter who blocks a catch off an illegal delivery is treated differently from one who blocks it off a legal one. And a great many appeals of this kind die on the question of whether the ball was still live, which is dead ball territory rather than Law 37.

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