The Spirit of Cricket

The Bodyline series was well before my time, but I am a big enough lover of the game to have it ingrained in my moral code of right and wrong: some things just aren’t cricket. There was nothing about Bodyline that fell outside of the laws, but it wasn’t within the spirit of the game and the laws were swiftly changed to prevent any captain from using Larwood’s leg theory to restrict the run rate of prodigious talent with the bat. The laws of cricket were also changed following the combination of Greg and Trevor Chappell in 1981, with the former instructing the latter to bowl the final delivery underarm. This prevented Brian McKechnie of New Zealand scoring the required six runs and handed the game to Australia. Running out the non striker by the bowler – Mankading – is still legal, although provokes mixed feelings whenever it happens in a match. The spirit of the game says that the bowler should warn the batsman that he intends to Mankad if they persist in leaving their ground when backing up.
Ball tampering has always been outside the laws of the game and frowned upon: it is cheating. That’s not to say that fielding sides do not push the boundaries of what is acceptable by allowing the ball to bounce on the pitch when returning it to the bowler, or throwing down the stumps when there is no chance of a run out. Both of these actions will scuff up the ball and help it to reverse swing as the game progresses, but actually rubbing an abrasive onto the leather is forbidden.
To say that it never happens would be ridiculous given the current correlation between the number of county sides with zip pockets on their flannels and how early into the innings that their fast bowlers get the ball to reverse swing among many other instances too numerous to mention.
What makes the events in South Africa so hard for me to take was the persistence of Australians quick to suggest that their opponents were using unscrupulous means to gain an unfair advantage whenever Australian batsmen found it difficult to score with the ball moving around. This holier-than-thou attitude that somehow only a cricketer wearing the baggy green could adjudicate where the line was with the spirit of the game, and be trusted not to cross it makes the whole sordid affair particularly distressing. When you factor in the sheer ineptitude of the attempt to alter the ball and then cover-up their deception, you get a sense of arrogance that was involved in a team that believed it had some right to win and to hell with the consequences. In fact, the relative ease of the exposure of this act of cheating gives the small consolation that this was probably a first offence: they certainly did not look as if they were well rehearsed!
Well, they were caught, the owned up and were duly punished; both with fines and bans, and a thumping South African victory following the sort of batting collapse that is all too familiar to English cricket fans helped to demonstrate that cheats never prosper. It is now time to move on: except that it isn’t.
First of all this ‘leadership group’ needs to be dealt with properly and fairly: one senior Australian bowler was not present when the decision to cheat was made and – rightly – feels that his reputation is being trashed to spare the blushes of actually being frank and naming the guilty parties. All of those need to step forward and admit to their part in the affair and stop hiding behind a thin veil of collective responsibility. A good team spirit and support of every member is admirable, but in this case it is deeply misguided and would hinder any attempts to rebuild trust with the Australian team in future. Those that took this decision need to face up to the full consequences of their actions before we can move on from here.
Then there is Steve Smith’s insistence that nothing like this will ever happen again under his leadership: he should have resigned immediately and not even speculated whether he would ever get the chance to captain his country again. A quick resignation would have already begun the slow process of rebuilding up trust and the fact that Smith cannot see this shows just how unsuitable a man he currently is for the role.
The insistence of Smith that Australian coach Darren Lehmann was not aware of the plan can be taken with the proverbial pinch of sodium chloride: I for one am not in the mood of accepting anything he says right now on face value without any questions. However, if we were to be magnanimous and accept that Lehmann was in the dark about the plan, his role in attempting to hide the truth from the umpires makes him an accessory after the fact and his position too is untenable. That he too hasn’t seen this and tendered his resignation already may also explain why nobody has suggested to Smith that Cricket Australia should be given the opportunity to start interviewing for a permanent replacement as Australia captain.
Cricket will recover from this and another positive we can take from this sorry affair is just how important the long form of the game is in a world of Twenty20 slogfests, white balls and pyjamas: cricket played in whites with a red ball is still top of the form. The Australian players may face a harder task ingratiating themselves into the world cricket family than others in the past: the way they play the game has left them with no friends to help them with their recovery and rehabilitation. In a way, that may not be a bad thing in helping remove some of the more extreme and toxic sledging from the Australian camp that helped to build up the kind of siege mentality that encouraged the leadership to hold a meeting and decide that home made sandpaper was the way forward.
This is a deeply troubling series of events, but anybody that heard Jim Maxwell fighting back tears during his commentary can tell how ashamed and disappointed they are in the team right now, and good signs that there is a willingness to do the right thing and get back on track. The problem is the people that committed the offence are yet to come clean and show they are prepared to take the steps necessary for Australia recognised once again as a great cricketing nation rather than a bunch of cheats. Anything less from them right now is just not cricket.