Sledging in cricket - Pump up the volume

It's time to turn the stump mikes all the way up, and leave them that way

Rob Steen

December 4, 2013

	The next time two players discuss the weather in detail, we'd love to hear what they're saying © BCCI  Enlarge

Taking issue with a pair of sage judges of humankind like George Orwell and Mike Brearley might not be the wisest intellectual venture, but into the valley of the ridiculed here I come.

In his 1945 essay "The Sporting Spirit", Orwell decried the competitive arts as "war minus the shooting" (international sport, that is, not sport per se; his incandescent response to a UK football tour by Moscow Dynamo is so habitually misquoted). Given the quotidian deluge of pain inflicted in its name, not to mention the occasional death, "war minus the looting" might be nearer the mark. Or better yet, as the latest renewal of Ashes mania appears bent on reaffirming, "war plus the loathing".

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Doesn't Sledging Hurt Anyone?

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More recently, this very week, Brearley wrote a typically astute article for the Times, lamenting the intolerably abrasive atmosphere of the Brisbane Test, observing that there was "a narrow line" between acceptable and unacceptable behaviour. This struck me as being overly generous.

What distinguishes sport from every other branch of the entertainment industry is its relationship with its audience, enforcing as it does an acute awareness of its constant (and constantly annoying) dancing partner - sportsmanship. Nobody talks about actorship or poetship or dancership; musicianship and authorship relate, respectively, to craft and rights, not conduct. But what do we actually mean by sportsmanship? It certainly tells us something about its complexities that no feminist I know has ever demanded that we refer to sportspersonship, let alone sportswomanship.

It seems reasonable to define this slippery virtue, broadly, as the willingness, even determination, to a) win fairly, honestly and modestly, and b) lose gallantly, graciously and, almost needless to add, unintentionally. Liable as they are to be copied in playgrounds, backyards and parks, any antic that even smacks of cheating or disrespect sets the most erroneous of bad examples, primarily to the impressionable young millions who invest so much of their emotion in, and glean so much of their joy from, the curious world of ballgames.

Sure, the older and wiser we get, the more we understand the unique nature of athletic battle and its impact on even the coolest of tempers. On the other hand, sports watchers of all ages are resolutely intolerant of relatively trifling misdemeanours such as time-wasting, feigned injury or even a withheld handshake. And woe betide those perceived to be cowardly, whether in the form of a tackle shirked, a risk untaken or an opponent tongue-lashed. And rightly so.

That's why, even as we grow ever more inured to violent images, and admiring of murderous on-screen drug lords and mobsters, sledging still disturbs disproportionately - because it tells us the perpetrator has given up trying to prevail through skill. There's banter and there's sledging, of course, and it is to the spite-rich, wit-free latter that one takes exception. To many, the Brisbane Test was sickening, not because of the savagery of the bowling but the vile viciousness of the verbals. One of the odder things about the three-for-the-price-of-one product cricket has become is that the least frantic variety is the likeliest to arouse indefensible behaviour.

Before we get to the remedy, a dose of perspective seems in order. Amid the same Gabba gabfest that saw Messrs Anderson and Clarke reiterate how far cricketers are prepared to go - and always have been - in quest of an edge, the media ridicule meted out to Jonathan Trott was equally if not more offensive. How sobering, moreover, to open a magazine that weekend and snuggle up with cuddly Mike Tyson.

Interviewed, helpfully, by a woman with whom he clearly felt more comfortable not being Mr Macho, here was a champion whose brutality inside and outside the ring is now matched by a self-flagellating honesty that somehow arouses compassion if not pity. Call it a salutary reminder of sport's capacity to simultaneously thrill and disgust. Call it the hidden price of admission. Still, when it comes to ranking the meanest, baddest-assed sportsmen of them all, Iron Mike the Ear-Cruncher was a spayed pussycat next to Ty Cobb.

When Charlie Davis, that endlessly creative Australian statistician, devised a formula to calculate sporting greatness, he focused on one solo endeavour, golf, and four team games - baseball, basketball, cricket and soccer. Using average and standard deviation (σ), the top three emerged as Don Bradman (4.4 σ above the norm); Pelé, whose goals-per-game superiority over other net-bulgers was 3.7 σ; and Cobb, the early 20th century diamond dazzler whose batting average soared 3.6 σ above the baseball mean. But while the Australian and the Brazilian played sport, the American, like Tyson, warred it.

	Denied the release of physical contact, it was inevitable that a cricketer should coin as dastardly a term as "mental disintegration"

"A red-blooded sport for red-blooded men" was how the perpetually snarly Detroit Tiger described his calling. Professional baseball, he insisted, was "something like a war". In acknowledging that the summit of his own profession was "pretty much a war", Alastair Cook at least had the grace to sound a teeny bit bashful.

Cobb was the ultimate ballplayer-warrior: think Steve Waugh, now multiply by a smidge under infinity. Here was a fellow who brazenly and showily sharpened the spikes on his boots, intimidating opponents and making fielders think twice about blocking his ferocious spurts down the baseline. In 1912, he assaulted a one-armed spectator who'd had the temerity to call him a "half-nigger". An enthusiastic racist, he packed a gun wherever he went; he was also reported to have pistol-whipped a man to death. And yes, he was also a mightily accomplished sledger.

The publicity tagline for Ron Shelton's admirably unmanipulative biopic Cobb was perfect: "The Man You Love To Hate". While no cricketer I can think of has ever warranted such a billing, personally speaking, the one who came closest was Matthew Hayden, whose incessant references to his devout Christianity were contradicted so expertly and shamelessly by those crude and cruel on-field tirades.

Sledging is as fertile a field for baseballers as it is for cricketers, because they, too, go about their labours at a leisurely pace; Tom Boswell, the revered Washington Post baseball correspondent, once described his job as "pondering inaction". Sledging seems so unnecessary. After all, another of the many characteristics the two games share is the extent to which they stack the odds. At any given moment, either nine or 11 men are ganging up on one, the avowed aim to negate, nullify and, ideally, exterminate.

Whereas baseball encourages physical contact and even indulges brawls, its more sedate brother from another mother is a subtler beast, albeit no gentler. What it most assuredly is not, has never been, is a game for gentlemen. Officially, that word itself denotes English peerage's lowest rank - below 80-odd others, even Master in Lunacy. When one's place in the pecking order is so insignificant, it is nothing if not pragmatic to be respectful, courteous, well-mannered and occasionally even honourable.

Denied the release of physical contact, it was inevitable that a cricketer should coin as dastardly a term as "mental disintegration". Whether it's Fred Trueman bullying a cowering Cambridge undergraduate, Dennis Lillee and Javed Miandad exchanging goads, Glenn McGrath spewing bile at Ramnaresh Sarwan or Merv Hughes foul-mouthing Graeme Hick, when it comes to rubbishing the game's reputation for civility the exhibits are largely verbal.

Trash-talking is all very well for boxers and those muscular clowns who have made WWE our least credible form of athletic competition. Is it naïve to expect ballplayers to rise above the sort of gratuitous personal abuse that would be stamped on in any other socially conscious workplace? Yes. Are we surprised that Darren Lehmann all but laughed off the suggestion of a "sledging summit"? Definitely not. Transgressors should therefore be pilloried as loudly as possible.

The name of the game must be shame. Shame the sledgers. Shame the needlers and the ranters. Shame the cowards. And the best way to achieve this noble end is not only to keep those stump mics on permanent duty but pump up the volume. Censorship is as pointless as it is dishonest. Why should the guilty be protected? Why shouldn't the audience, spectators as well as viewers, hear every sling and arrow of outrageous verbiage, preferably in Led Zeppelin-esque, Dolby-clarified, Marshall-amplified, 5.1 Surround Sound? They are part of the show. If turning the dial all the way up to 11 encourages wit, splendid. If it exposes nastiness and callousness, even better.

According to international protocol, of course, this ought to be a non-starter rather than a no-brainer. Still, judging by SABC's freewheeling deployment of the stump mic during last week's ODI against Pakistan in Port Elizabeth, let alone the 2006 Durban and Cape Town Tests, which saw Tony Greig and Mike Hussey take bilious exception to such eavesdropping, this doesn't seem to bother the state broadcaster unduly. Regrettably, I cannot report precisely what choice words the fielders selected after Quinton de Kock had given Junaid Khan a gentle shove for invading his space; my command of Urdu, shamefully, is on a par with Shane Warne's acumen in the shrinking-violet department.

Such is the precarious mutual dependence between sport and its most industrious sponsor, the reality is that behaviour will only be improved by stealth. Someday soon, a stump mic will be "accidentally" cranked up, not merely at a heated moment but for an entire day. Technical gremlins will be blamed. Innocence will be asserted. Apologies will be tendered. But the damage, with luck, will have been done. If there really is such a thing as the spirit of cricket - or even The Spirit of Cricket - I can't think of a better way to define what it isn't.

Cricket - Were the good old days really better?

Let's break it down to a few parameters and try to make an objective analysis

Rob Steen

March 20, 2013

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	The stakes might be higher these days, but the DRS has struck a blow for honesty © Getty Images  Enlarge

Technology or human eyesight? Helmets or bare bonces? Covered or uncovered pitches? Back-foot no-ball law or front? Arlott or Bumble? Does any breed of sporting spectator spend quite so much time as we cricket folk when it comes to debating the merits of the way we were and the way we are? Granted, our baseball and boxing counterparts in particular might scoff at such a suggestion, but they haven't seen their game repackaged as three distinct products.

"Before the Fall? Reflections on cricket in England during the 1950s" is that sagacious social historian David Kynaston's contribution to an annual lecture series at Lord's. A prolific author and academic whose books range from Austerity Britain to W.G.'s Birthday Party, Kynaston uses ten criteria to compare past with present: aesthetic, meritocratic, competitive, craft, excitement, personalities, sportsmanship, walking, crowd behaviour, "mattering", and coverage. Overall, he concludes, "it comes out pretty even".

Loath as I am to take issue with such an esteemed chronicler - and bearing in mind that I had yet to celebrate my third birthday when the 1950s ended - this strikes me as a perfect case of nostalgia overshadowing, if not fact, then assuredly common sense.

Given that we are six weeks away from the 50th anniversary of the most far-reaching of cricket's innovations,the limited-overs game (90 years, it should be noted, after the first knockout cup event was abandoned after a solitary match), now seems an apt moment to stand back and reflect on how far we have come and whether, on balance, we have advanced. Most of Kynaston's categories will do nicely, although it feels reasonable to merge walking and sportsmanship (is the former not an intrinsic, if extreme, aspect of the latter?).

Before we begin, let's reel back to a revealing Daily Express survey from that summer of '63: the "Better Cricket Competition". Readers were invited to make five suggestions to improve the County Championship, then the planet's lone competition for full-time pros. The judges - Alec Bedser, Doug Insole and Norman Preston, editor of Wisden - assessed 2000-plus entries, from whence came sundry proposals: overseas players, Sunday play, promotion and relegation, over-restricted first innings, more overs per hour, 15-pace run-ups, rewards for faster scoring, leg-before decisions to dissuade pad-play, and eight- or even ten-ball overs.

The more sensible of these would soon be woven into the first-class fabric, though it is intriguing to note that the judges were unanimous in insisting that the most pressing need was the elimination of time-wasting. In this respect, at least, it seems fair to say that cricket in 2013 lags a vast way behind 1963, though whether this matters is another kettle of cod entirely. It certainly didn't seem terribly important to those who completed the recent public surveys conducted by the ECB and Cricket Australia.

And so to the Kynaston Test. Not unnaturally, some of his sub-divisions permit more objective analysis than others. So, for all that he rightly deems it to be "somewhere near the core pleasure", let's dispense with the aesthetic, the "sensory aspect". The way he sees it, much has been lost through the arrival of "helmets, garish-coloured clothing, umpires no longer in white coats, sponsors' markings on the playing arena" and the "continual noise and exaggerated celebrations" of the players; such preoccupations will strike younger generations as profoundly old hat, not to say downright petty and daft.

Meritocratic
Fifty Aprils ago marked the start of the first English season to be unencumbered by the distinction between shamateurs and professionals: all hail the new meritocracy. Now, thanks to the multiplicity of formats, the ultimate meritocracy is with us: not only can even an Afghan earn a penny or two, you can have a disobedient body, like Shaun Tait does, and still put in a fruitful day's work by bowling four overs. Today: 2pts

Competitive
In the 1960s the average Test total was 323; over the past ten years it has been 350. Yet before we get too carried away with this apparent widening of the gap between bat and ball, the rise in scoring rates (from 2.49 runs per over to 3.27) has compensated handsomely for the reduction in the number of overs per day, the upshot being that the ratio of conclusive results has soared from to 53% to 74%. Throw in the fact that standards are far more uniform - while only England, Australia and West Indies were regular winners in the first period, this year alone has seen New Zealand take a one-day rubber against South Africa and force England to follow on, India all but reverse 2011-12's 4-0 loss to Australia, and Bangladesh trade 600s with Sri Lanka - and it's another no-contest. Today: 2pts

Craft
Uncovered pitches might have asked more of batsmen (and commensurately less of bowlers) but immeasurably more is demanded of today's practitioner. Who knows whether undimmable titans such as WG, Bradman or SF Barnes would have been so adaptable, but there is no question that Hashim Amla, Marlon Samuels and Graeme Swann are as effective over 20 overs and 50 overs as over five days. 1pt apiece

Excitement
Two words should suffice: "Virender" and "Sehwag". Or "Kevin" and "Pietersen". Or "De" and "Villiers". Or, if we're being thoroughly modern, "Shikhar" and "Dhawan". Or, if we're being meritocratic, "Lasith" and "Malinga" or "Saeed" and "Ajmal". Put it another way: when those of us who can remember that far back try to recall feeling excited while watching the game half a century ago, the options are generally confined to "Garry" and "Sobers". It helps, of course, that we can now trust our own eyes rather than parrot the word of others. Today: 2pts

	Does cricket matter more than it did? In numerical terms, given growth in population, communication technology, access to games and ICC membership and funding, of course it does. But is it healthy for an essentially trivial pursuit to matter more?

Personalities
Comparing characters from different eras is even more ludicrous than comparing Jonathan Trott and his distant ancestor Albert (though we can at least claim with some confidence that Albert, the only batsman to clear the Lord's pavilion with a single blow, was the more aggressive). Again, greater visibility predisposes us to favour the likes of Shane Warne, but this is counterbalanced by largely unpublicised stories from an era when sportsfolk were less closely monitored and hence able to get away with more.

Hugh "Toey" Tayfield is justly celebrated as the greatest of South African spinners, but it was a complete revelation to me to learn, this very week, not only that he was a rampant womaniser who died penniless and largely forgotten in a hospice, but that during the 1960 Old Trafford Test he had been due to appear in court for allegedly failing to repay a £230 loan ("He was a slow bowler and even a slower payer" quipped the prosecution lawyer). We know Sobers and Ted Dexter would have been "personalities" in any era, but given the greater rewards for notoriety today, Tayfield might have met a very different end. 1pt apiece

Sportsmanship
You could be forgiven, here, for concluding that higher stakes and more frequent fixtures have left today lagging miles behind yesterday, but is that truly the case? "Long after the unenterprising cricket of this Test is forgotten, people will talk of two incidents which brought to a head the question of whether batsmen should 'walk'." So attested Basil Easterbrook in Wisden of the 1965 Newlands Test, referring to Eddie Barlow's decision to ignore two appeals for catches (both rejected) and Ken Barrington's self-ordered exit following a thin nick that eluded detection - arguably the least profitable act of vengeance in the game's history. On the other hand, the capacity of the DRS to expose the truth economists has sired, if not a revival of this most honest (if class-ist) of sporting customs, then certainly a few more incidences than I can recollect witnessing in previous decades. 1pt apiece

Crowd behaviour
Of the 11 riotous contests Ray Robinson analysed in The Wildest Tests, one was played in 1933, the others in the first quarter-century after the Second World War. Had he completed the book in 2002 rather than 1972, he would not have had many to add. Sure, there may be less inclination to applaud the opposition, but add comfier seats, more efficient policing of drunkenness and better protection from the elements to the joie de vivre of the Barmy and Swami armies, and there seems little reason not to believe things have improved.Today: 2pts

Mattering
Much the trickiest category. Does cricket matter more than it did? In numerical terms, given growth in population, communication technology, access to games and ICC membership and funding, of course it does. Kynaston disagrees, citing the rise in matches, freedom of player movement and alternative leisure activities alongside a decline in the ritual nature of the fixture list and a tighter focus on city-centre venues. But is it healthy for an essentially trivial pursuit to matter more? How often in days of yore did a bad result convince Indians or Sri Lankans to kill themselves? Yesterday: 2pts

Coverage
There is, of course, no comparison here whatsoever, whether in depth or breadth or even - because we see and know and understand more - quality (literary worth, again, is strictly a matter of taste). At the risk of sounding as disinterested as a mongoose pronouncing judgement on a drunk and disorderly cobra, the range and geographical sources of the voices on this site surely supply incontrovertible proof that we've never had it so good. Hell, if the residents of the Tower of Babel had co-existed this peacefully, we'd all be speaking Hebrew now. Today: 2pts

Final score: Today 13, Yesterday 5

Let's face it: nostalgia simply ain't what it used to be.

India's reinstatement of Ian Bell was a testament to their sportsmanship, not to cricket's supposed moral superiority

The oldest cricket cliche of them all

Ian Bell acknowedges the crowd after his second stint at the crease following his reinstatement against India. Illustration: Laurence Griffiths/Getty Images

A question: what connects the increase in 1923 of the cost of brewing licences, the British Army's use of dum dum bullets in the Boer War, modern Toryism, Arthur Balfour's opinions on Tariff reform, the lack of bilingual librettos in modern opera, the refusal of Lancashire mill owners to limit the working hours of their employees, and the theft, in 1921, of 1,000 cigars and a consignment of Trilby hats by the theatrical agent Marmaduke Miller?

The answer is that they were all, according to the Guardian "not cricket".

Unsurprisingly enough given its overuse, the cliche eventually lost its currency. But the myth persists that cricket adheres to a stricter set of ideals than other sports. There are a set of stumps pitched permanently on the moral high ground. And so, when MS Dhoni recalled Ian Bell to the crease last Sunday, the phrase "not cricket" was dragged out and dusted down by a couple of the commentators on Test Match Special.

My friend and colleague Rob Smyth wrote a good little book trying to fathom exactly what the spirit of cricket is. But one of the most telling definitions I've seen recently came from Steve James. "I was captain of Glamorgan for two full seasons and in both we won the MCC's Spirit of Cricket award," he wrote last Sunday. "But I've no idea what we did or what it was for." The spirit, Steve rightly points out, is a morass of contradictions. It is permissible for a batsman to stand his ground if he knows he has touched the ball, but it is a sin for a fielder to claim a catch that has touched the ground. It is against the spirit to "dispute an umpire's decision by word, action or gesture," but the DRS now encourages players to do exactly that.

As the Guardian has proven, it is often easier to point out what the spirit of cricket is not than what it is.
And what it is not has, over the years, encompassed just about everything. One of the earliest appearances of "not cricket" was in the Guardian, back in 1888, in a report of the opening match of the county season between Nottinghamshire and Sussex. "The Notts Committee agreed with the Marylebone Club in their endeavour to put down leg play," we are told. "It was not cricket, said Mr Oates, and people would not come to see play of that kind." Leg play! Perish the thought.

In England cricket first flourished as a game played by blackguards, rogues and gamblers, matches were played outside village inns for vast wagers, and results were bought and sold. It was the Victorians who recast it as an altogether more upright activity. "Not cricket" next crops up in the Guardian in a report of a sermon given by the Venerable Archdeacon Wilson at Rochdale Parish Church on 4 February 1894. "Cricket encourages a love of fair play," he told what we can only assume was an enthralled audience. "It is a moral training that operates far outside the cricket field." As for football, well, "the dishonourableness and ill-temper of its controversies is best described as 'not cricket'."

And yet anyone with even the most cursory knowledge of the way the Grace brothers played the game will know that they committed sins against "the spirit" that went way beyond playing the ball to the leg side.
Back in 1864, for instance, "not cricket" makes its very first appearance in these pages in a report of an incident in a game between Surrey and '18 gentlemen', one of whom was WG's elder brother, Edward. "Finding Jupp holding his ground at the wicket in defiance of the most insidious and trying balls," Grace "resorted to the expedient" of bowling a series of three "full pitch deliveries which culminated at 30 foot high and descended on the wicket at an angle unprovided for in the practice of the game."

Jupp, assuming it was an errant delivery, hit the first of them to leg (gasp!) for two. But then "turned sulkily" away from the next two deliveries and allowed them to take their course. The third of them landed flush on the undefended wicket. "There were bursts of hisses from the spectators, who did not conceal their disapprobation for Mr Grace's bowling. They stigmatised him as an 'old woman' and his bowling as 'no cricket'. "The Sporting Papers took up the question, and numerous correspondents angrily support either side," the report continues. "The main accusation against Mr Grace's new trick is that it is "not cricket". That it is quite legal we may assume, as the umpire did not decide against it."

And there's the rub. To this day there is a tension between the letter and the spirit of the laws. What a team is allowed to do and what we think it ought to do can be two quite different things, and when it comes to winning matches players often prefer to give the first precedence over the second, while the press do the reverse.

When Rob's publisher designed the cover for his book, they chose to use one of the most iconic photographs in the history of cricket: Andrew Flintoff with his arm around Brett Lee in the moments after England's victory at Edgbaston in 2005. And understandably so – for many people it seemed to capture the essence of the spirit of the game.

And yet there are people who worked alongside Flintoff in the England team – who insist on staying off the record – who argue that this was the moment that spoiled him as a cricketer. From that point on, they have told me, he became too obsessed with the public perception of him as 'good old Freddy', the guy who always plays the game in the right spirit. When he was appointed captain for the 2006-07 Ashes, he was too friendly with the opposition, too keen to have a laugh during the game and a beer after it. England even brought in a sports psychologist before the third Test at Perth to try and toughen him up. Flintoff himself hinted at this when he wrote, in the forward to Matthew Hayden's autobiography, that the friendships he developed with the Australians changed the dynamic, bringing "a respectful edge to the proceedings" in the middle.

And so to Trent Bridge last Sunday. Some will always argue that MS Dhoni's decision – prompted, reportedly, by the insistence of Sachin Tendulkar – to recall Bell showed weakness in his team's will to win. Others, myself among them, would say that it was simply an impressive piece of sportsmanship, albeit no more so than Paolo Di Canio's refusal to score in an open net when the former Everton keeper Paul Gerrard was down injured, or Andy Roddick arguing that the line judge was wrong to call Fernando Vedasco on a double fault when he was down match point in the 2005 Rome Masters.

The credit is India's alone. The decision was a testament to their character and sportsmanship, not to the moral superiority of the sport they play. The prattle about other sports learning from India's example seems insufferably pompous coming from a game whose history has been as riddled with controversy as cricket's has.