Why is cricket only major sport in the world where some people demand that players do the umpires' jobs for them?
Martin Williamson
While the poor umpiring during the Sydney Test has attracted many of the headlines, much vitriol has also been directed at several players for not walking when they have nicked the ball. At best they have been accused of unsporting behaviour, at worst of downright cheating.
And yet what is it about cricket that it is the only major sport in the world where some people demand that players do the umpires' jobs for them? There is nothing in the Laws that requires a batsman to walk, although there is a widespread feeling that batsmen always used to do so in the good old days, and by not doing so now the current generation show themselves as being inferior.
The reality is that walking has always been a contentious issue. The concept grew up in social cricket in Victorian times when the whole ethos of gentlemen being sportsmen was formulated. And yet, even at that level, there were some batsmen who walked and some who did not.
WG Grace, the epitome of Victorian cricket, never walked. Lord Harris, who is possibly the most establishment figure the game has ever known, admitted in his autobiography to have stood his ground when he knew he was out. "This is a case when the umpire on appeal has decided that a batsman is not out," he wrote. "The batsman, although he knows he was out, has no business to retire from the wicket."
In the 1920s there is a story of Johnny Douglas, the Essex amateur captain, storming into the Gloucestershire dressing room to berate a young Wally Hammond, at the time a professional, for not walking. Both were at one time England captains.
And yet at the same time Jack Hobbs admitted to Gubby Allen that he had edged a ball but stayed when given not out. When Allen remonstrated, Hobbs replied that it was unfair to undermine the umpire, adding that "if I had [walked] then he would almost certainly have given me out at the next possible opportunity." Hobbs was one of the game's true gentlemen - in all but name as he was no amateur - but his point was clear. The umpire is there to make decisions and not the player.
In the post-war period the debate rumbled on. There were many complaints that some batsmen were walkers unless the situation was tight in which case they would stand their ground, aided by the umpire giving them the benefit because of their reputation as a walker. Writing in The Guardian, Mike Selvey claimed that Colin Cowdrey walked for obvious decisions but not for marginal ones in the hope his reputation would save him.
When England visited Australia in 1982-83 they made a collective decision not to walk, the logic being the Australians never did so why should they. It was once said that an Australian only ever walks when his car breaks down.
Bill Lawry, a former captain of Australia, was clear about the issue when he played. "Leave it to the umpire," he said. "The umpire has a job and I have mine. I will not walk." That's fine. He knew he would get a break one day but that on another he would be on the rough end of a bad decision. His view was that the two evened themselves out. As long as a non-walker accepts a bad decision with good grace, what is the problem?
Steve Bucknor, in the eye of the Sydney storm, said a few years ago that some batsmen would only walk when they had passed a hundred and not before they had scored. "If he knows he is out and he goes, that's good for the game," he said. "But the umpire should not depend on someone who is a walker. Otherwise, that same walker may embarrass the umpire.''
In short, unless every player in the world walks without hesitation, it won't work - and human nature means that simply will not happen. There is too much at stake to ask even the most ardent walker to give himself out when he gets the thinnest of edges after being on the receiving end of a string of bad decisions and is, as a result, batting for his place.
Not walking is not cheating. Claiming a catch you know you have not caught cleanly is; the same goes for claiming a bat-pad catch when you know it was nowhere near the edge. The difference is that in one you are leaving the umpire to make his decision, in the other you are openly trying to deceive him.
The umpiring at Sydney was as poor as the umpiring was good in Cape Town. The officials got several decisions badly wrong, and not just ones that the benefit of endless replays showed as being errors. That is something for the ICC to address as it is becoming clear that the demands put on a tiny panel of elite umpires by a burgeoning fixture list is causing the best of them to crack.
The one thing the players can do to help is to leave all the decisions to them. The one thing the public can do is to accept that players should not be expected to act as their own hangmen.
cricket
The important thing is that the rules should be the same for both the sides and they should be made explicit before the game starts.
ReplyDeleteSo if Virender Sehwag is suspended in South Africa for appealing for a taking a catch which wasn’t then should Ricky Ponting, Adam Gilchrist, Andrew Symonds and Michael Clarke be. Or are the rules different for different sides.
If most sledging is OK but some terms are deemed racist therefore some forms of sledging are not acceptable while others are - then let the ICC publish the rule book of sledging - what sledging is OK and what is not with illustrated examples, a dictionary etc. (for instance it is apparently OK for Glenn McGrath to ask a West Indies batsman what a certain part of Brian Lara’s anatomy feels like because it was non racial macho thing to say – basically gutter level personal abuse if OK in the gentleman’s game but not anything to do with race). Or should action be taken against both forms of abuse.
For the record let me state calling someone a monkey does not have racist connotations in India – in fact a monkey is a revered animal in India and one of the major Indian Gods is the monkey God Hanuman. However that is no defence since calling a person of African descent a monkey does have racist connotations and should not be done – but maybe many in India do not understand the sensitivity of the matter.
The joke doing the rounds in India is that when an Australian child learns to say the word “Mother” for the first time the parents say “Two cheers. Junior has learnt half a word”. For the Australian team to complain about sledging and occupy the moral high ground on this issue is a bit thick.
I guess they were getting a taste of their own medicine in the World Cup 20-20 and India and were suffering from some not inconsiderable indigestion as a consequence.
Harbhajan made a mistake if (and only if) he referred to Andrew Symonds as a monkey. Wrong choice of animal mate - you should have used a reference to some other noteworthy mammal to respond to Symonds’ abuse - swine or dog come to mind as possible candidates - they are pure insults and carry with them no racist overhead. This error gave the Aussies a handle to turn the tables on the Indians by raising the racism issue. The Indians need to refine their sledging strategy. It needs to be more nuanced - someone in the Indian camp needs to think this through. India needs a specialist sledging coach (anyone for Gregg Chappell for this position - he is Australian and they are the best at this).
But be happy India - in colonial times it took the word of ten Indians to overrule the word of one white man in India. Today you need to have two white witnesses to overrule the word of one Indian.
The world is indeed flattening.
Feels a bit odd though - white people accusing Indians of racism.
But have we heard the last of this.
We have a situation where a white match referee (from a country that till very recently practised the worst form of racism as state policy) takes the word of two white witnesses (who are not neutral) over that of one Indian witness (who is not neutral) and without any independent witness or corroborating evidence (no video, no audio, nothing heard by the umpires) bans an Indian player (who the white Australian captain finds himself incapable of playing and so will benefit from this ban, and it was this Australian captain who insisted that the racism charge be laid at Harbhajan’s doorstep).
Hmm. Food for thought perhaps