The Hindu : Sport : Damaging the spirit of the game

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Aug 30, 2006

Sport

Sport

Damaging the spirit of the game

There is a growing tendency to challenge the laws of the game, writes Makarand Waingankar

THE HINDU PHOTO LIBRARY

TACKLING SKILLS: Managers, who were not cricketers, had handled tricky situations with finesse in the past, and the Melbourne Test incident in which Sunil Gavaskar dragged Chetan Chauhan towards the pavilion was just one among them.

Cricket is a game that owes much of its unique appeal to the fact that it should be played not only within its laws but also within the spirit of the game. Any action, which is seen to abuse this spirit, causes injury to the game. The major responsibility for ensuring the spirit of fair play rests with the captains.

This is the preamble to the laws of the game. The Darrell Hair issue will get sorted out when the ICC's disciplinary committee meets, but the spirit of the game has been badly damaged by the Pakistan team.

Whether Hair and his colleague Bill Doctrove acted in haste or Inzamam-ul-Haq and the manager of the Pakistan team Zaheer Abbas (a former captain) lacked maturity will be debated for decades. Sadly, it will add to the list of controversies.

Adding to the terrible mess that this controversy has created, the ICC released the correspondence Hair had with the persons concerned in the governing body, and though it will to some degree weaken Hair's case, the integrity of umpires will be questioned in future. The tag of racism will be raised everytime a team from the sub-continent claims to have been victimised.

And if the exercise of the two Boards involved in the Ashes to have umpires from England and Australia is accepted by the ICC, India and Pakistan too will have umpires from their countries for the Indo-Pak series. How will that help the game?

Handling situations

There were days when people who had not held a bat went as managers of international teams and handled tricky situations with finesse when the umpires stuck to the laws of the game.

The manager of the Indian team on the Australian tour of 1980-81, Wing Commander Durrani, may not have played the game at the highest level, but he did defuse the situation in the Melbourne Test when Gavaskar dragged Chauhan towards the pavilion.

The situation is totally reversed now when someone like Zaheer Abbas, who as a captain, had staged a walkout in a childish manner in the Bangalore Test in 1983-84, is (as manager of the team), also party to the decision in the Oval Test.

It is not yet clear whether Zaheer Abbas acted firmly or not, but having indulged in a Test match walkout, he ought to have realised the repercussions of a walkout.

"The major responsibility for ensuring the spirit of fair play rests with the captains", states the preamble to the laws of the game. So busy are modern day captains in exploring all the options to win the game, that they hardly seem inclined to study the repercussions their immature actions will have on the game, which is played more by teenagers.

If anyone thinks that the juniors are too innocent to know and indulge in the art of scuffing the ball or picking the seam, one may be surprised to know the subtle tricks with which they do the job on the field. Now with this Oval Test incident, they will have learnt the art of putting umpires under pressure.

No regret

The worse thing that has happened is that there has been no regret from either the Pakistan captain or the manager. In the case of Mike Atherton applying dirt to the ball, even before match referee Peter Burge could act, the manager of the England team Ray Illingworth fined Atherton and defused the situation. Illingworth said: "We fined him £2000 — half of it for using the dirt to dry his fingers, half for lying to Peter Burge".

Challenging the laws

There is a growing tendency to challenge the laws of the game, and the ICC will have to act tough. The more the ICC gets into diplomatic solutions, the more it will damage the spirit of the game. Challenging the decision of the umpire, howsoever wrong it may seem, will set a dangerous trend.

Unlike hockey and football, this lovely game of cricket has still not thought of yellow and red cards. The day that happens, the game will lose its charm.

And when Ranjan Madugalle wasn't available to conduct the inquiry, couldn't the ICC appoint Clive Lloyd or Sunil Gavaskar to head the committee? Or was the ICC shaken by Hair's demand of $500,000?

Printer friendly page
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Sport