Have you ever wished for something bad to happen to a person you dislike and when something does, it’s not as satisfying or fulfilling as you thought it would be? That’s how it has been, watching 3 grown men weep and agonize over the past weeks.
Free Hit Contributor – Sandeep Rodrigo
Here’s a guy nicknamed the ‘Bull’, the guy who punched an opponent in a pub and almost knocked out another walking back to the dressing room, crying like a little kid who broke their favorite toy. Not a pretty sight. I take it back, it was a bit satisfying.
What’s actually been a crime is how the whole thing has been blown out of proportion and the ridiculous punishment the players received. Well, Warner deserves it. It’s a punishment not for the actual incident but for the accumulated ‘douchy’ things the Australian Cricket team has done in the recent past. It’s the straw that finally broke the Camel’s back, but it’s unfortunate that Bancroft and Smith (undoubtedly THE batsman of this generation) have been made to walk the plank for a something the whole team should go down with the ship for. Some like Faf Du Plessis have been caught and punished multiple times, got away with barely a fine and have ironically taken the moral high ground during the current fiasco. Currently ball tampering is a level 2 offence as per ICC rulebook which is equivalent to giving your opponent the middle finger mid pitch. Then how does the punishment fit the crime?
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Ball tampering is like passing gas in public. It’s perceived as disgusting, you’d jump over a bridge before admitting to it, and you always tell others it wasn’t you and point to someone else. But at the end of the day, everyone knows everyone does it. Well, almost everyone.
The greats have done it too. If you have any doubt, you can refer the weirdly candid admissions by Imran Khan in his autobiography. He says it’s gamesmanship and not cheating. This by the way is using a bottle top. One quick Youtube search and you can see all these well-known players caught on camera ball tampering from using sand in their pockets to taking a big bite off the ball.
From the famous lyrics of Peter Tosh (yup, it’s all about ball tampering),
“Legalize it
Don’t criticize it
Legalize it, yeah yeah
And I will advertise it”
How is the contest between bat and ball still an equal contest when it comes to rules, standards and acceptance? Forget the 20’s, a modern-day bat is more like an assault weapon even compared to what the players used in the 90’s. The edges on the bats look like a broad side of a barn. Any top edge will drop the ball on row Z. The ‘middle of the bat’ or the ‘meaty bit’ is now basically anywhere from the bottom of the handle to the toe end of the bat. To add, the grounds are getting smaller and smaller where a mishit would clear the boundary comfortably. When did you last see a pair run a 3 in a limited overs game?
Remember the time Gilchrist had a squash ball inside his gloves, scoring a brutal hundred in the 2007 world cup final to beat Sri Lanka? Most people (including myself) except the heart broken Sri Lankan population saw no wrong in that and even went ahead and praised the genius. Wasn’t that a foreign object in contact (through the gloves) with the bat?
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That’s just the disadvantages the bowlers have compared to the batsman. Then there is the disadvantage between the bowlers themselves. All these recent incidents are efforts made to assist the fast bowlers reverse swing the ball. The reason a lot of these incidents in the recent pass (sweets and Vaseline to shine, zipper and sandpaper to rough up) have been caught because it’s tough to tamper just one side of the ball. From the time when we were kids playing U15 cricket, for the first 10 overs the captains and the keeper scream their heads off to the outfielders to throw the ball in full. This is to avoid the ball hitting the ground and roughing up (naturally) the side of the ball that the fielding team is shining to get swing. In typical spin friendly Sri Lankan wickets (even matting wickets), after about the 10th over, all throws are basically rolled along the ground to the keeper from the boundary. Unlike for reverse swing, for spinners to get a grip on the ball and for the ball to grip the surface both sides are needed to be roughed up. So you don’t need any foreign object chucked inside your briefs. Roll it, slam it on the ground, step on it with your spikes or drag it along the sandy patch on the field. All of that can be explained as normal. For the spinners it’s 11 players helping to tamper the ball by purposefully roughing up both sides of the ball. Admittedly the umpires aggressively keep a tab on this and the fielding team is supposed to keep the ball away from the ground. But still, it’s a lot easier to do than hiding foreign objects and using them while trying not to get caught to one of the 50 cameras at the ground.
So why punish only the poor fast bowlers. Is it the ball tampering giving an unfair advantage or the rules giving an unfair disadvantage? It is not a clear line like the boundary line. If the ball bounces before the line, it’s a 4. If the ball bounces on top of the rope or after, it’s a 6. The law on ball tampering is a massively wide grey area. To add to that, the different levels of punishment handed out has made it even greyer.
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I’m not saying we need to give the fielding team a carpenter’s toolbox to massacre the ball. The solutions vary from giving the fielding team one foreign substance to shine the ball to having the opportunity to change the ball to one from the ‘box’ which has been used the same number of overs but has subsequently been ‘cleaned’ & ‘shaved’. Depending on what part of the world you are playing, you don’t even have the choice of ball you get. One place it’s only the Kookaburra and other’s it’s only the Duke. Give the bowler a break. Let the bowler choose the ball and give the opportunity to change the ball often. Let the fielding team take a new ball after 60 overs instead of 80. The argument on legalization is more to do with providing alternate options to the fielding team to deter from actual tampering. On top of that, an accepted and agreed upon method of enhancing the ball under the watchful eye of the umpire.
A quick google search and there’s plenty of articles by past greats who are pro legalizing ball tampering. It’s time the ICC assembles a panel of experts and moves forward in making the large grey area a little less ambiguous. Equally important is to define the punishment. Currently if an umpire thinks there’s been tampering, the penalty is to award the batting team 5 extra runs. For the same offense, if you face the press, the world and man up, you get banned for 1 year by your board.
Ball tampering in an ugly phrase, uglier than the actual act. Whether you are an U15 cricketer, an amateur club cricketer or an international cricketer, chances are you have contributed to it in one way or the other. It’s time to make it less ugly. Call it ball enhancement and legalize it.
Sandeep Rodrigo – Follow me on Instagram (ArmChair Critic), FB (ArmChair Critic) and Twitter (ArmChair Critic)
*Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author’s and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of ThePapare.com
