AGAINST THE SPIRIT

Cricket came into being in the 17th Century and from the time WG Graceand Don Bradman donned those cricketing whites and took that willow in the Test format, a kind of subtleness was associated with the game. But amidst this subtleness, cricketing history is quite replete with the instances which, in no way can be categorised as gentlemanly.

Suraj Randiv's ‘deliberate No ball’ is just another example in the long list of events which has marred the so called ‘spirit of cricket’. The most famous or rather infamous fiasco going against the spirit of cricket was that of Trevor Chappell’s underarm bowling against arch rivals New Zealand. Interestingly the batsmen against whom the underarm action was used, Brian McKechnie was reprimanded because he threw his bat on the field and thus had shown misconduct.

 

It was one of the lows of cricket and it forced the cricketing fraternity to think hard about their complex rules. But again at that time it was not illegal as such because such a rule did not exist. Even in the case of Suraj Randiv one can’t really hold him accountable as it was a no ball anyone could have bowled and according to the law, the run of the ‘no ball’ was counted. But it was the spirit of the game which was overlooked, Randiv knowing that the fate of the game has already been decided could have given the chance for Sehwag to score a century, but allegedly he didn’t.

There was an instance where, the great Sunil Gavaskar playing his penultimate game was on the verge of making his maiden one day international (ODI) century against New Zealand and the New Zealand bowlers respecting the great man bowled him loose delivery to allow him get to his century. There was no big fuss about it, but the point is this was how the game was played a decade back.

Now with the level of competition and the increasing frequency of the games it is quite obvious that the spirit of the game is declining or players quite evidently are giving it a miss. Maybe the players are forgetting about certain morals, values or integrity associated with the game and they don’t seem to care at all. Mark Waugh had once famously said, “Millions of Australians want us to win the World Cup. I don’t know anything about the spirit of cricket.”

 

Well his point seems fair enough and to validate this very point of Waugh, there are some grey areas which need to be attended at by the cricketing apex bodies, if they intend to ensure the spirit of cricket does not die. Like for example sledging as such is really against the spirit of any sports, one can’t abuse or intimidate other for the sake of the game alone and yet for some weird reason the cricketing apex body does seem to allow the sledging to carry on.

What I am trying to come to is the fact that one talks about the conduct or moral or integrity or spirit of the game, it is very subjective and if International Cricket Council tries to keep every other cricketing body happy, then positive changes can not be expected.