At the game I was watching, there was some good cricket, plenty of runs by both teams' professionals as they dispatched the ball all around the ground and some great catches, although early on there were a couple of dropped ones, leading the batters to score a lot more runs.

The saying 'catches win matches' was certainly true in that case, as who knows what would have happened if the catches had been made.

It was an entertaining match with both sides having a slump in as far as runs were being scored at the end of their innings, as before that happened there was talk of 300 possibly being scored and in the second innings of the side chasing down the total, which at one stage was a distinct possibility.

Two talking points arose among the spectators at the game. First was the ball the wicketkeeper missed which went on to hit the helmet placed behind the stumps.

The batsmen crossed while running before the ball hit the helmet so eyes were on the umpires as to what was signalled to the scorer.

Five penalty runs were signalled by the umpire by patting his shoulder and also the bye signal.

There was discussion around me as to why the bye signal as most people knew once the ball hit the helmet it became dead and nothing further would count.

However, because the batters had crossed, the run counted so a bye had to be signalled as the ball never touched the bat nor the batter's person.

The second one was a ball that was hit straight back at the bowler who managed to get his fingertips on the ball but it was deflected on to the stumps.

There were cries of "out" from the spectators until someone said the umpire had to be sure the batter wasn’t backing up and had been able to ground his bat or person behind the popping crease, not on it but behind it.

There are often cases of batters saying, "but my bat was on the line" but that’s not good enough.

Some part of the batter’s person or bat must be behind the line which goes for run-outs and stumpings.

Groundsmen can help the umpires with this by marking the creases in a suitable width.

A pencil-thin line makes it hard for the umpires to see, especially on a bright sunny day.