Not cricket

Administrators must recognise the new realities of the sport

The biggest irony of the recent ball-tampering controversy involving the Australian cricket team is that politicians, fans, players and sponsors appear to be more exercised about it than the International Cricket Council (ICC), the body responsible for governing the game. The Australian prime minister berated his national side, terming “sandpapergate” a “disgrace”. Cricket Australia banned the captain and vice-captain for 12 months. The Board of Control for Cricket in India, scarcely reputed for probity, took the cue and summarily expelled the duo from the cash-rich IPL. Some sponsors have withdrawn support to Cricket Australia. But the ICC? It went strictly by the rulebook.

A day after the incident exploded in the cricketing world, the ICC handed Steven Smith, the Australian captain, a one-match ban in the ongoing Test series against South Africa, and fined him 100 per cent of his match fee. The vice-captain, David Warner, was also stood down and given a one-match ban, while the cricketer doing the tampering, Cameron Bancroft, was fined 75 per cent of his match fee and three demerit points.

This underwhelming response reflects the world cricketing body’s ostrich-like failure to recognise the transformation in the nature of the game over two decades or more. When one of the big powers of the sport resorts to cheating, it underlines that cricket has long ceased to be the “gentleman’s game”, which demands forbearance from its participants. The tennis world understood this in the sixties, ending the “shamateur” era, when so-called amateur players surreptitiously played for money. Most other major world sports — football, baseball, basketball, hockey — started out with professional players, principally because they did not emerge from the kind of snobby class distinctions embedded in cricket, tennis or golf. These sports are by no means squeaky clean but there is a realistic recognition that where money is involved, people may feel encouraged to cheat.

Perceptive followers of cricket would have noticed the transition in the infamous Bodyline series in 1932-33. England captain Douglas Jardine encouraged his crack fast bowler, the Nottinghamshire coal miner Harold Larwood, to bowl the short, rising ball into the batsman’s body. Not cricket, howled the Aussies, in an era when armadillo-like protective gear was yet to be invented, but there was nothing in the rulebooks to stop it, except, yes, that supposedly gentleman’s agreement. “Gentleman” Jardine won that series, became a hero, but the man who depended on the game for his livelihood, Larwood, never played Test cricket again.

As cricket metamorphosed into a profession over the years, the “gentleman” became harder to find. To wit: Tony Greig’s infamous close of play run-out of Alvin Kallicharran in Port of Spain in 1974, John Lever’s application of Vaseline in Chennai in 1977, the rise of sledging (pioneered by the Aussies, emulated by the British and South Africans), the growing reluctance of batsmen to “walk”, the football-style heckling of umpires. Each of these corroded the spirit of the game to the point that South African captain Hansie Cronje risked his career on fixing matches for cash.

With the ICC watching benignly and apparently retaining its faith in player chivalry, the transgressions flourished, with the shorter versions of the game (helped along by betting bans in South Asia) allowing such innovations as “spot fixing”. The ICC has finally woken up. “Enough is enough”, its chief executive said on the website a few days ago, announcing a long-overdue review of the game’s increasingly egregious practices. As he said, “The spirit of cricket is precious to our sport and so intrinsically linked with good behaviour — the turn of phrase, ‘that’s just not cricket’ is not an accident. We must protect that spirit.” The starting point would be to recognise that this spirit is no longer guided by gentleman but professionals.