BATTING OUT OF ORDER

Explanation of the batting out of order rule.

In the top of the 2^nd Inning batter 5 Roberts is the leadoff batter. Batter 7 Swan walks into the batter’s box next. He takes 2 pitches 1 ball and 1 strike. The scorer then says to batter 6 Black that he/she should be batting not Swan. The fielding team calls time and asks the umpire for batting out of order. The umpire works out that it is the incorrect batter in the box. All he does is gets batter 6 Black to come into the batter’s box and batter 7 Swan goes and sits down. Batter 6 Black will assume
the 1 ball and 1 strike count that was on batter 7. The game continues without any penalty.

Two innings later batter 2 Smith leads of the batting and gets a safe hit and is at 1^st base. Batter 4 Green comes up next and hits the first pitch and gets safe to 1^st. The fielding team now appeal to the umpire for batting out of order. The umpire has a look and says yes they are correct. He then applies the batting out of order penalty which is the batter who should have batted (in this example that is batter 3 Jones) is called out and all actions that resulted from batter 4 Green getting on base are nullified and everyone on base will return to the base held when Green came to bat. The next batter up will be the batter who follows the batter given out. So in this example batter 4 Green will come back to the batter’s box and start his/her turn at bat again.

If the fielding team had of come to the umpire for batting out of order after a pitch had been delivered to the next batter in this case batter 5 Roberts then all actions from the previous incorrect batter batting will stand and the game goes on without any penalty. Batter 3 Jones would just miss out on a turn at bat in this innings.

Should any body still have difficulty understanding this rule please let me know and I will come and run a short information session on a Saturday morning for you.

Steve Suckling

Umpire coordinator DDMSA