Cricket: Playing with the spirit of the game
Even though cricket is known as the gentleman’s game, there are enough controversies in cricket to prove otherwise. Form match fixing to sledging, there are plenty of examples of cricket not being as clean as it is made out to be. But it’s also a game where great players have set extraordinary examples of sportsmanship, the famous of which being when Courtney Walsh gave Salim Jaffer a second chance.
Today’s Australian victory against India in the second test at Sydney has taken cricket to a new low. Here a few thing I noticed and my thoughts:
Umpiring
First thing which stood out was how horrible umpiring has gotten in cricket. There are umpiring errors in any sport, but from Tennis to cricket, technology is used to not only minimize umpiring errors, but also to improve the accuracy of umpiring. But, cricket seems to have a very vague protocol for the use of technology in terms of the third umpire. It has come to a point where an umpire asks a fielder if they caught the ball, that’s like asking a thief if he robbed! Why the BCCI does not take a stronger stance against this is baffling?! The whole Test Match was lost because of this.
Sportsmanship
The second thing which stood out was the lack of sportsmanship. Now, my initial reaction was to blame Australia for bad sportsmanship, but then given some thought, it occurred to me that good sportsmanship is no easy feat. It’s a rarity in any sport, because good sportsmanship can get in the way of victory, which is the only goal in any sport.
Australia’s hunger for success is a stronger force than the desire of other teams to deny them that success
BBC Sport’s Oliver Brett
Even though India came out looking the better team in terms of playing with the spirit of the game, Australia came out looking the smarter team. However bad it might look, the Australian’s took advantage of the flaws in the game to carve themselves a nice record setting victory. Australia also played to win, while India played to draw, that kind of attitude difference can impact gameplay tremendously. One plays aggressively while the other plays passively. In this case, aggression won.
Sledging and Racism
The verbal exchange between Andrew Symonds of Australia and Harbhajan Singh of India, resulted in the Australian team lodging a complaint of racism against Harbhajan Singh. Well, the verdict is out, Harbhajan Singh is banned for 3 tests for calling Andrew Symonds a “Monkey”. Evolutionarily speaking, what’s wrong with one monkey calling another monkey, “monkey”?! Now, what I am interested in is what did Andrew Symond’s say to provoke such a reaction from Harbhajan Singh?
Joking aside, sledging and racist comments are seriously out of control in cricket and I am sure far worse things than calling someone a monkey is said on the field. It is time cricket introduced on field penalties, like having players sit out in a penalty box for smaller incidents, and expelled from the match for more serious incidents. Unless there are more immediate in match penalties, sledging is both going to go on, and get worse.
In the end, the rivalry between Australia and India is growing, and probably will soon trump the India-Pakistan rivalry. This is good for cricket, and like the test match in Sydney, it makes for entertaining cricket, and can only make it more popular.
