Game needs tighter rules
Cricket was once a game played by gentlemen in a spirit of camaraderie summed up in the poetic words: “Play up, and play the game!”
Cricket is now a professional international sport, a career for sportsmen and women who have the aptitude and dedication to represent their team and to win, sometimes misguidedly so, at all costs. Indeed, selfless commitment to duty, to represent one’s team with honour, have been eclipsed by senseless commitment to victory by any means.
These obvious changes in the way cricket is played require adjustment of the rules in order to render the contest a fair one between bat and ball and between the competing teams.
The temptation to cheat, engendered by the pressure to win, needs to be properly tempered by those who regulate the game so there are proper lines of responsibility and accountability in place.
It appears that surreptitious “ball-tampering”, now spectacularly uncovered, may have given Australian pace bowlers an unfair advantage for some time.
The stricter regulation of what is done with and to the ball between deliveries is indicated.
A designated “ball polisher”, who is nominated by his captain on a “per session” basis, may in future be required to do his polishing under the watchful eye and direct supervision of the square leg umpire (or either umpire) between overs and deliveries. The umpires don’t have much to do when the ball is not in play, so the change will not be onerous. The materials that can legitimately be used to polish the ball or part of thereof can easily be designated.
In this way the temptation to cheat, which seems to be a universal one to which many players from most teams have succumbed over time, will be thwarted.
As with crime, so with cheating – the notion that one can act with impunity needs to be tackled to stop the scourge. This task now falls to the International Cricket Council.
At least the more cynical doubting Thomases now know that the outcome of the current Test series was not fixed – there would be no need to cheat if that were the case.
Paul Hoffman, SC Director, Accountability Now