Redrawing the circle

Article 6 says –

One of the players of the team that won the draw chooses the starting point and draws or places a circle on the ground such that the feet of each of the players can fit entirely inside it. However, a drawn circle may not measure less than 35cm or more than 50cm in diameter.

A common question about this rule is –

I can’t fit my feet inside the circle that was drawn by the opposing team. What should I do? Can I redraw the circle myself?

The answer is NO, you can’t redraw the circle if it was drawn by the opposing team. The proper procedure is to point out that the circle is too small for your feet, and to ask the opposing team to redraw the circle.

Don’t be shy. 35 centimeters, the minimum legal size for a drawn circle, is about 14 inches. Unless you have unusually large feet, a circle that is too small to hold your feet was probably illegally small to begin with. If that is an issue, you can always take out your tape measure and measure it.

Remember… When deciding whether or not your feet fit inside the circle, you must be standing with your feet together, side by side.

There is a proper procedure for redrawing the circle.

• Do NOT extend the old circle outward in one direction, so that it becomes an oval rather than a circle. The new circle should be as close to a proper circular circle as you can make it.
   
• Draw the new circle so that (if it was drawn precisely) it would share exactly one point with the old circle, the point that was closest to the jack. Here is a diagram.

When the circle is redrawn, note that it doesn’t have to be redrawn so that it is a full 50cm in diameter. It only has to be big enough so that you can stand with feet together, side by side, and they fit entirely within the new circle.

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The string is not the boundary line

A playing area contains an indefinite number of terrains defined by strings… —Article 5 – “Playing areas and regulation terrains”

Boundary lines are like invisible walls rising up from the ground, separating lanes from other lanes and from out-of-bounds areas. When the authorized officials lay out the lanes in the playing area, they are in a sense doing two things— installing the invisible walls, and installing strings to show players the locations of the walls.

A string shows the location of a boundary that was installed by the authorized officials. But the string itself, as a physical object, is not the boundary line, and moving it does not move the boundary line.

Recently a question was posed to international umpire Mike Pegg.

A boule moving rapidly toward the out-of-bounds line is caught by the boundary string. The string stretches and then, like a bowstring launching an arrow, pushes the boule back onto the terrain. Like this.
In the scenario depicted in the picture, did the ball cross the boundary line or not? Is the boule dead or alive?

Mike answered

[T]he boule would be considered live if it has not fully crossed the dead ball line. … In the diagram the boule has not crossed the line…. so it is not dead.

In Mike’s view, the string is the boundary line. It follows that if a boule moves a string, it moves the boundary line.

I disagree. In my view—

1. The string is not the boundary line.
2. Anybody or any thing can move the string. But the boundary moves only when the string is installed or moved by an authorized official.
3. In the diagram, the boule moved the string. But it did not, and could not, move the boundary line.
4. The boule completely crossed the boundary line. Therefore, it is dead.

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