Craig Overton’s ugly episode provokes a question

What does it mean to support a team? How should we feel about the eleven players lining up to represent us? Should it matter what kind of people they are, or were? How conditional should our support be, and when should we withdraw it? These are some of the questions I’ve been grappling with over the last couple of weeks, as Craig Overton prepares to make his England debut in the first Ashes Test next Thursday.

Overton, the Somerset all-rounder, looks likely to become England’s 681st male Test cricketer at Brisbane, after injuries to Steven Finn and Jake Ball. He is 6ft 5in, swings it at pace - although with the old Kookaburra ball, his role is more likely to be one of containment - and has looked sharp in warm-up games. At the age of 23, and coming off a superb season in county cricket, his time appears to be now.

No, Overton’s talent is not in serious question. What is in question is his character, and specifically an ugly episode that occurred two years ago at Hove.

These are the facts: in September 2015, Overton was bowling for Somerset inst Sussex in a County Championship game. After one particular delivery to Ashar Zaidi - who was born in Pakistan but holds a British passport - Overton was heard to mutter the words: “Go back to your own f***ing country.”

Two separate witnesses noted the comment: non-striker Michael Yardy and umpire Alex Wharf. Yardy challenged Overton immediately. Wharf informed the other umpire. Both men reported it to the England and Wales Cricket Board afterwards. Under the ECB’s disciplinary guidelines, Overton could have expected a Level 3 charge, for “language that vilifies another person on the basis of race or national origin”. The previous season, Yorkshire captain Andrew Gale had used virtually identical words, been charged with just such an offence, and received a four-game ban.

When the ECB-appointed committee delivered its verdict, however, something quite different happened. Overton was found guilty merely of a Level 1 offence, the lowest possible, for using “obscene or offensive” language. It is often misleadingly reported that he was banned for two games for his actions. In fact, that ban resulted from the accumulation of two previous minor offences. Had his record been clean, he would have walked away with nothing more than a reprimand.

Two years on, Overton is on the verge of receiving the greatest honour of his career. He seems a genuinely changed man these days: more focused, less angry, less overtly confrontational on the field. He has worked extensively with a sports psychologist, and has tried - or been encouraged - to paint his subsequent ascent as a sweet redemption tale, a fine young cricketer making the most of his second chance.

There is, however, a complication here. Overton is still enjoying his first chance. Arguably, he has paid no real penalty, suffered no real consequences for his deplorable words, did not even deem it necessary to offer a personal apology to Zaidi. The ECB denied that Overton’s international status - he had already been picked for the one-day squad by that point - was a factor in the ruling. THE INDEPENDENT