I don't think there's a rule against rolling the ball to a batter; it would be called a ball. It would be similar to a wild pitch or an intentional walk (when you had to actually throw the 4 balls).
replyI'm beginning to feel like Americans trying to understand cricket trying to understand the tactical permutations of intentional walks :D
replyThe equivalent would be bowling a ball rather than a strike in a baseball variant where each innings ended after a fixed number of balls regardless of the number of outs (which is effectively what One Day variants of cricket are). Specifically, walking the batsman when they needed to score a home run or at least a double. I think fans would get upset!
Watch softball sometime.
replyI mean this does exist in baseball, kinda, but there’s incentive to not do so since it gets the opposing team closer to scoring: https://www.mlb.com/glossary/standard-stats/intentional-walk
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