Let Please!
The Questions and answers to our earlier poser are below, remember that there
is a copy of the rules available from the refereeing
page.
- 1. Player A plays a boast and the ball hits his opponent on its way from
the side wall to the front wall. Answer: if the ball would
have made a good return but has touched or will touch a side wall before reaching
the front wall a LET is allowed.
- 2. Player A plays the ball and on his follow through strikes his opponent
with his racket. The opponent asks for a let. Answer: As
long as it is a reasonable follow through the opponent is entitled to nothing
and NO LET is the correct decision.
- 3. Player A serves the ball and you (the ref.) think that it might have
touched the line. At the end of the rally which the server won the opponent
asks for a let on the service. Answer: As referee you were
correct not to stop the rally if you were unsure of the service. You should
now allow a LET as you were in doubt. The winnning or losing
of the rally makes no difference to this decision.
- 4. A player breaks her racket during a rally and asks for a let. What is
your decision and how long has the player to replace her racket? Answer:
NO LET for the broken racket and 90 seconds for the change of equipment.
- 5. A player serves from the incorrect side of the court but you did not
stop the serve. At the end of the rally the receiver - who lost the rally
- asks for a let on the serve as it was from the wrong side. Answer:
As referee you should have made sure that the serve was taken
fron the correct side. However, once the receiver accepts the serve then the
result of the rally should stand and your decision is NO LET. The same
would apply if the server had lost the rally.
- 6. A player returns the ball down the centre of the court and takes up a
position on the 'T'. The opponent allows the ball to come off the back wall
and then asks for a let as there is every chance that the ball, if played,
would strike the other player. Answer: This
is a STROKE as he would have struck his opponent with the
ball if he had played his shot. The fact that it has come off the back wall
does not change the decision. Some players wrongly think that because a ball
has come off the back wall the decision should be a let only.
- 7. A player turns on the ball (that is, allows the ball to pass on one side
of the body, strike the back wall and travel back by the other side of the
body) plays the shot and strikes the opponent with the ball on its way to
the front wall. Answer: The rule
on 'turning' has been changed and the correct decision now is to penalise
the player who played the ball by awarding a STROKE TO THE OPPONENT
who was struck by the ball. Only where the opponent ran in front of the turning
player will the striker be awarded a stroke.
- 8. A player is injured and requests time to recover. How long has the player? Answer: In
the case of injury the referee must decide if the injury is self-inflicted,
an injury contributed to by both players or an opponent inflicted injury.
In the case of 'self-inflicted' injury the referee should allow 3
minutes to the injured player to recover. The player must then play on
or concede the game in progress and use the 90 second interval between games.
In the case of 'contributed to' injury the player has 1 hour.
If the injury is caused by the opponent, the player is awarded
the match if recovery time is needed..
- 9. What is the marker's call in each of the following?
(a) A player fails to play the ball before its second bounce. Answer:
The call is "not up".
(b) A player strikes the tin with the ball. Answer: The
call should is "down".
(c) The ball touches the out of court line. Answer: The
calls is "out".
- 10. A Junior player requests to play using his or her own glasses instead
of the required eye-guards. Answer: Junior players (that
is those under 19 years) playing in all competitions
are required by the rules of the game to wear protective eye-guards. Junior
players are not allowed to wear their own glasses (spectacles) but can wear
prescription lenses in their eye-guards. World Squash recommends all players
to wear protective eye guards.
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