ONE of the T20 matches had to be decided by a bowl-out thanks to a sudden downpour on Friday night which left the pitch ends and old pitches soaked.

By the time we waited for it all to be mopped up, there was no certainty the ground would be fit for even a five-over game.

So a bowl-out was agreed and out of 44 balls sent down, only four hit the wickets.

Now these same bowlers appeal each week for lbw.

The last of the five points an umpire has to go through in his mind in deciding if a batsman is out lbw is 'would the ball have hit the wickets?'

In this case, only four actually did. In many bowl-outs I have undertaken, it's often been the wicketkeeper who has been successful but this wasn’t the case on Friday.

I read with interest about Test umpire Bruce Oxenford and a device he has made for protection for umpires from a ball hit straight back at them.

It is a shield that can be attached to the arm and quickly raised to protect both body and face.

He quoted umpires have 0.4 seconds to react to the ball flying back at them – about two thirds of the time it would normally take a human to react.

In a recent match, he quoted an example of when Jason Roy hit a boundary.

The ball was bowled at 80mph and came back at 120mph, just missing the umpire.

He went on to say he holds the shield in front of his chest and only needs to raise it slightly to protect his face.

What happens if the ball hits that and is caught by a fielder? Out or not out? Well, we might need to write that into the laws of the game.

More than likely an umpire can get out of the way but it’s the deflection off the bowler that we can’t control and invariably can get hit.

Last week I mentioned the case of a batsman walking knowing he was out.

A similar incident happened this week, however both umpires and the batsman were unsure the bowler got any touch on the ball.

The umpire is then in a difficult situation as a decision needs to be made. We don’t have the benefit of a TV replay and as there was doubt in the umpires' minds the decision had to be not out.

Players have to remember the umpire is usually trying to get out of the way which makes a decision even more difficult.

It will be interesting to see if this 'Ox Block' catches on and might be part of the umpires’ equipment in future years.