Border-line cricket

Whichever way the two current controversies "" over umpiring and charges of racism "" turn out, cricket lovers are going to be saddened at the way things have gone, not just on this Indian tour of Australia but over a much longer period. The simple truth is that a mostly gentle game in which certain decencies were maintained has become like any other. Fans are entitled to ask who is most responsible for this, and Australians should not be surprised if a majority from the world's dozen cricket-playing nations blames their team. The trouble, as David Gower, the former England captain, has written in his autobiography, started when Allan Border took over as the Australian captain. He had to rebuild a team that had lost its premier place in the previous 8-10 years (remember Kim Hughes, the Australian captain, bursting into tears after losing the first two Tests to the West Indies in 1985?). One of the methods he adopted was to suggest to his players that the opponent was an enemy. This led to reduced off-field bonhomie, writes Gower, and increased on-field aggression. To quote Border: "I made a personal choice to have a harder edge as captain, be more stand-offish towards them (the English) ... It was a hard thing to do and they all got the s**ts, but it was all part and parcel of what I wanted to achieve." This so-called 'hard' way of playing the game worked, and Australia won the World Cup in 1987. It has not looked back since.

His successors, Mark Taylor and Steve Waugh, tried to soften things a little. But sledging, which is Australian cricket's term for abusing the opposing team's batsman, became a weapon in achieving what was euphemistically described as "the mental disintegration of the batsman". This also had the support of their umpires, who saw nothing wrong in slip-fielders exchanging banter about, say, the sexual needs of the batsman's sisters or wives. But by the mid-1990s, retaliation had started, especially from the South Africans. The South Asians, who field four teams and are no slouches when it comes to abuse, were at a disadvantage "" those who came from the middle class and knew English were squeamish and the rest didn't know English! But they also caught on. Very soon the Aussies wanted to define what was acceptable sledging and what was not. Andrew Symonds' charge against Harbhajan Singh is a result of this desire to frame the rules, even for sledging "" though why racist abuse is more offensive than the kind of abuse meted out to Zinedine Zidane is open to question.

Playing 'hard' has also meant jettisoning some of the other nicer parts of the game, such as batsmen not 'walking', fielders appealing even when they know it is a bogus appeal (Ricky Ponting on Sunday) and bowlers intimidating umpires. This is the Aussie way and, as Javagal Srinath said on TV on Sunday, everyone who tours Australia understands this. The loser is the game of cricket.