Declare a No Ball when a batsman attempts an early run

Girish Menon from CamKerala CC

David Hopps in his piece, 'Is the game going to the dogs' suggests that Stuart Broad in the forthcoming World T20 should without warning 'mankad' Kohli and Raina off successive balls. This is his way of reminding us of the role of convention and civilised behaviour in cricket and he implies that in its absence anarchy would prevail.

So, I decided to look up the meaning of convention on the omniscient Google and found that one of the meanings of convention is 'a way in which something is done'. I think it is this definition of convention that Hopps uses to criticise Keemo Paul for mankading Richard Ngarava in the U19 World Cup.

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I then asked myself what would be at the other end of the spectrum of convention and I felt the term 'creativity' would fit the bill. Google defines creativity as ' the use of imagination or original ideas to create something'.  When Keemo's act is examined from this perspective it is a creative act, not illegal, and an imaginative way to reach the objectives of his task.

In the history of the world, not just cricket, whenever any creative solution is implemented, affected governments would debate and proscribe such activity if it was not in the 'public' interest. In the case of 'mankading' such an inquiry has been conducted by the ICC and the act has still been deemed legal, hence the furore baffles me.

Hopps felt that it was newcomers who failed fail to honour cricket's conventions. So I asked myself, two questions:

'Is it newcomers to cricket who disrespect its conventions'?

and

 'Are conventions in the best interests of all participants?'

In the case of Keemo Paul, yes he is definitely a newcomer to cricket, so probably was the original sinner Vinoo Mankad and the other mankaders in between. I suppose these guys may have read about the laws of cricket and how the umpire's decision should not be questioned. As they plotted to get the opposing batsmen out, a difficult task at the best of times, they may have noticed this anomaly between the law and its actual practice. Being young and innocent they may have focussed on their objectives and failed to realise the opprobrium that will befall them if they challenged cricket's archaic anomalies.

So who makes conventions? A historical examination of societies will reveal that conventions and practices evolve out of the systems devised by the powerful. A history of cricket also reveals that it's rules and conventions were determined by upper class batsmen epitomised by the roguish W G Grace. The bowlers were the proverbial servants meant to exist for the pleasure of batsmen. It is these servants, like the erstwhile British colonies, who now challenge the prevalent conventions albeit legally in the case of the mankaders.

Hopps then gives an example of queue jumping to illustrate the catastrophe that will befall mankind if any convention is broken. Yes, the effects of queue jumping has created havoc in India and probably other erstwhile British colonies. Yet, as any economics student will tell you the problem with a queue is that it does not ration a scarce resource based on greatest need. If the A&E departments of NHS hospitals worked on the convention of queues then a Friday night over-reveller would have priority over a critical patient and an ambulance would be perennially stuck in traffic.



© PA Photos

Returning to mankading, I believe that cricket's current convention enable non striking batsmen to cheat wilfully throughout an innings and it is time for conventions keep in tandem with the laws of the game? I actually even have a solution for the mankading problem. Declare a no ball* and penalise the batting side every time a non striker steps out of the crease illegally. This could be done by the third umpire while the on field umpire focuses on the bowler's actions.



* This no ball means a one run penalty and a ball reduced from the batting side's quota.

An ode to Gower

Rob Steen in Cricinfo

Exquisitely flawless, the former England captain was the Rembrandt of batting: all touch, timing and subtle depth; and never better than 30 years ago


David Gower: poise, fragility and ineffable beauty © Getty Images



"I found it strange that the 2005 team all found themselves with MBEs in the next Honours List. If I had been given an award every time England won the Ashes during my career, I would be in the House of Lords."

Tongue may have been caressing cheek with customary aplomb, but that isn't the sort of sound bite one associates with David Gower, being largely bereft of understatement and peppered with self-assertiveness. You can find it in Sex & Drugs & Rebel Tours, Dave Tossell's latest erudite, immaculately titled romp through the occasional ups and persistently numbing downs of Team England over the final quarter of the 20th century, a gruelling, gripping, excruciating slice of comical, angst-ridden soap opera - call it tailenders - that proved a handy weapon in the bitterly unscrupulous tabloid circulation wars.

David Ivon Gower doesn't do snide. Nor does he do haughty or sneery. Everything he did with a bat in his hands oozed natural elegance; honed through thousands of net hours at King's School Canterbury but still an extension of self. No world-class athlete this column has ever met has tried less to impress, or been so self-effacing, or rubbed so few up the wrong way. No sporting hero turned commentary-boxer has spent less time recounting past glories or waxing nostalgic. And no competitive artist has better embodied the spirit of that fabulous (if possibly mythical) Cary Grant one-liner: "Everyone wants to be Cary Grant - even I want to be Cary Grant."

Is there any more fitting coincidence than the fact that Gower rhymes not only with flower but power? On this topic more than any other, frankly, this column is resolutely and hopelessly myopic. Its adoration is so ardent that it agreed to be Gower's first biographer, even though a giggle-a-page autobiography, expertly ghosted by his soul brother Martin Johnson, had already sold by the juggernaut.

Two years later, less fortunately for subject than author, there was more to say. Hounded into premature retirement by those who vindicate Charlie Skinner's acidic adage in The Newsroom- "Hell hath no fury like the second-rate" - Gower deserved a more robust defence as well as a less restrained celebration. The most stinging volleys of righteous abuse were saved for Graham Gooch, the captain and friend whose own career Gower had once preserved with such compassion.

Just once during a meeting at his Hampshire home did the mood dip below exceedingly pleasant - when the interviewer, anxious to temper the idolatry with some journalistic dispassion, accused him of mental laziness. Cue a rambling but sound counter theory that made it easy to understand why he had gravitated towards a legal career, even if it did find him more or less pleading guilty as charged.

Few upper lips have been sturdier. He certainly appeared far more willing to forgive Gooch than his biographer was.


****


Imagine a gallery of cricketers as artists. David Warner as Jackson Pollock - the epitome of bold subversion, Mr Couldn't Give A Toss. Pietersen as Dali: a galling, irrepressible, un-ignorable minor genius. Tendulkar as Michelangelo, all smooth lines and sacred overtones. Warne as Picasso, all new tricks and piss-takes. Murali as Van Gogh, a sorcerer, earthy and soulful. For Gower, read Rembrandt, all touch, timing and subtle depth.

Gower cast spells like no other. Whenever he was on TV, so desperate was Tim Rice, the wordsmith behind Jesus Christ Superstar, to see his idol succeed, and so fearful that he might not, that he hid behind the settee. During his illustrious reign as editor of Wisden, Matthew Engel cited Gower's 72 in Perth in 1982 as the finest knock he'd ever seen, "an exquisite, flawless diamond". Knowing Matthew as this column does, it is as certain as it can be that this was the only time he has ever uttered or written the word "flawless" and not preceded it with "not" or "hardly".

Never, though, was Gower quite so exquisitely flawless as he was 30 summers ago. That the memories still glow can be attributed in good part to the fact that we sporty Poms were in such dire need of reasons to be cheerful. May 1985 had scored a horrifying hat-trick.

On the 11th, a blaze erupted in a wooden stand at Bradford City's Valley Parade, killing 56 spectators; many Yorkshiremen still blame the club's late owner for arson - a series of such "accidents" had befallen a number of his other business concerns - but the roots of the tragedy were embedded in the national game's contempt for its customers. At Wembley a week later, Manchester United's Kevin Moran become the first player to be sent off in an FA Cup final, for a so-called "professional foul", denying Everton a likely lead that would have decided the game in the regulation 90 minutes; Norman Whiteside's perversely wondrous extra-time strike ensured the sinner emerged a victor. Then, 11 days later, came the nadir of f***ball hooliganism, aka "the English disease": at a dilapidated stadium in Belgium, blatantly unfit for purpose, a horde of boozed-up Liverpool fans charged their Juventus counterparts, a wall collapsed and 39 died.



Gower, seen here with wife Thorunn, was at his mesmerising best against the Australians in 1985 © PA Photos

Summer brought balm. Not only did England reclaim the Ashes, they did so with style and vigour. Best of all, the man who sheepishly hoisted the replica urn between right thumb and forefinger on the Oval balcony harvested 732 runs - still the most by an England captain in a series against Australia, not to mention the most by any Pom in an Ashes debate at home. The second movie this column ever saw was Summer Magic, a Disneyfied yarn whose allure lay wholly in another blonde bombshell, Hayley Mills; here, more than two decades later, was the sequel. Vince Lombardi could go to hell: good guys really could come first.

Tanya Aldred was luckier than most: she broke her cricketing virginity that heady, often dizzying summer. "Delicate David - my father's hero became his children's hero too," she reflected in The New Ball Volume 4. "His batting was of a vintage so lipsmackingly tasty that even a Formula 1 driver would be loath to spray it around. Flick of the wrist - four. Eighty-nine of them in total. Stressed-out executives should be forced to watch videos of each one, every morning before work."

Awe sprang not so much due to those innately, inexpressibly handsome strokes as the serenity and stillness at their core. Here he was, captain of his country, facing the ancient enemy, and betraying not so much as a hint of a glimmer of anxiety (it helped, admittedly, that Allan Border's party was approximately the third-puniest ever to land in England). If Bradman was the white Headley, Gower was the white Sobers, in temperament and movement if not versatility. The miracle was that he was loved by so many who would normally be infuriated by one so resistant to emotion or visible effort. The vulnerability had much to do with it; the vulnerability that comes with performing on the highest wire of excellence, forever swaying between sublime and negligent.

As if poise, fragility, humility and ineffable beauty weren't enough, Gower offered something even more precious: dignity. "At least I've had a couple of years," he said shortly after the first of his two sackings as England captain, in the wake of India's maiden Lord's Test win in 1986. To his credit, marvelled Frank Keating in the Guardian, "he has not changed a jot since the selectors appointed him two years ago. He remains a laid-back charming goldielocks with a touch of genius at the crease, no histrionics or tantrums in the field, and an ambassadorial approach to the world." Having kept Ian Botham onside and succeeded where Mike Brearley failed by getting the best from Phil Edmonds, he'd have been just the chap to keep KP inside the tent.


The key to that constancy was not the diffidence or arrogance perceived by some but that acute sense of proportion. Sure, he loved the game, the cameraderie as much as the challenges, but winning was never everything. Who else could have had the brass balls to announce to the media, after a bad day against Border's vengeful side at Lord's in 1989, that he was off to the theatre? That he returned on the Monday to make a silkily defiant century, however fruitless, spoke of a will immeasurably stronger than commonly assumed. "It felt like the captain versus the press," he recalled. "In a sense it was quite good fun."

Ultimately his greatest asset was courage. The courage not to be cowed by Dennis Lillee, Malcolm Marshall, Wasim Akram or even Fleet Street's snarliest. The courage to attack in situations calling for grim defence and sobriety. The courage - notwithstanding those early efforts at de-elocution - to be posh during the heyday of inverted snobbery. The courage to be both man apart and man out of time. The courage, above all, to stay true to himself in the face of envy and ridicule.

That's why, 30 years on from his sunniest summer, at a time when there are hardly any reasons to be cheerful about so many of the elements that allegedly made Britain great, this column feels compelled to entreat its Queen: please, ma'am, do the decent thing when you finalise next month's Birthday Honours List and send your foremost sporting ambassador a text informing him he is going to be the first Englishman to be knighted exclusively for his on-field contributions since you tapped Len Hutton on the shoulders in 1956. Having approved yet another bloody Tory government, it's the very least you owe us.

Vicky pays the Pryce

What makes Chris Huhne and Vicky Pryce so compelling is that we all live on the brink of disaster

Chris Huhne was sent to prison today. But if his fall from grace seems remote from anything that might happen in our own lives, we should think again.

In my experience all of us, at any stage, are potentially just a few steps from disaster. It takes no more than a handful of bad decisions to reach the point that events are out of our control and disaster overtakes us.

It's not unusual

Mr Huhne’s decisions to speed and to cover up his offence, were not unusual. Up to 300,000 of us may have persuaded others to take our penalty points for speeding, according to a survey for the AA in 2011. However, once Mr Huhne rejected his wife and forfeited her loyalty, his ability to control events passed out of his hands. The disaster that followed was entirely predictable.

As a lawyer specialising in criminal law, the point that strikes me over and over again is how close we all are to the disaster of a criminal investigation and trial, whatever our background or circumstances.  We are all capable of committing crimes. It takes very little - a moment of temptation, a rush of anger, a reckless impulse - to commit many crimes.  Then all that stands between us and a criminal conviction is discovery, investigation and trial. 

Goethe once said that there was no crime of which he did not deem himself capable.  Most of us will understand the sense of what he was saying even if we cannot sign up to the entire proposition.  In identifying with his thought, we do not condone acts of violence or dishonesty, we simply recognise our own capacity to fail.

So why do people who have every advantage in life – a happy family background, a decent education, a good job - commit crimes? Few of us with such a background set out to commit a crime. There is too much stopping us: we have grown up believing in, obeying, and benefiting from rules, and we have prospered. The fear of losing all we have is a strong motivator to obey the law. We spent much of our lives controlling our behaviour. 

It is when an event or set of circumstances occurs which causes us to lose control, or when we think that the risks are minimal, that the danger surfaces. People convicted of stealing from their employers often do so because the pressure of debt in their personal lives overwhelms them. They begin with a genuine intention to repay the money that they “borrow” when circumstances allow, but somehow this moment never arrives.

Losing control

Often people convicted of downloading indecent images commit their crimes because they cannot control their behaviour but they also convince themselves that they will never be caught. These cases rarely involve a single instance of criminality. Instead they begin with a single bad decision (to take from petty cash or look at an image), followed by a further decision which commits the individual to the path that they choose.

Then there are other factors in the mix that are particular to ourselves: our appetite for risk and the extent to which we think we can control events.

When Dominique Strauss Kahn approached the maid in his New York hotel room; when Jonathan Aitken announced he would begin a libel action to “cut out the cancer of bent and twisted journalism in our country”; when Lord Archer sued the Daily Star for libel over allegations (subsequently proved to be true) that he had slept with a prostitute – they were spinning the dice but also, I suspect, taking the gamblers pleasure in doing so. They thought they could win.

It may be that the biggest risk-takers are also those most likely to take the bad decisions that lead to disaster. But we have all done things we regret which through happenchance never become known, or have compounded an error by our subsequent decisions. The Huhne case illustrates the additional danger of entrusting a secret to others.

Once that step has been taken, then all depends on their ability or willingness to continue the deception.