Words All Vacuous has probably never watched a game of cricket. Penalise "air shots"? How? Why? The purpose of the bowler is to knock the bails off, or trap the batsman into HITTING the ball into the air for a catch, or defending his wicket illegally with his legs, or being out of his ground when the bails are removed. The purpose of the batsman is to make runs, either by running between the wickets or by making the ball reaching the boundary. Hitting the ball is incidental to this; he does it (if necessary) to prevent the ball hitting the wicket, or to get the ball either to the boundary or far enough from a fielder that he (and his partner) can run between the wickets before it is returned.

The art of the bowler is to force the batsman to hit the ball where he doesn't want to, or to fool him into thinking it will miss his wicket when it's on target; the art of the batsman is to anticipate the bowler's guile and to use it to get runs (which incidentally is why Boycott... oh, never mind).