Why altering the ball should be legal, and why it won't be

We have guys queueing up to open the batting — to avoid facing a reverseswinging ball

● You wouldn’t think a cricket ball could be at the epicentre of so much trouble. But that’s like thinking guns don’t kill people — people do.

Fact is, cricket balls have killed people. That the unfortunates who have unleashed them had not been trying to kill is the difference between bowling and pointing guns at people.

Another fact is that, as awful and tragic as death on a cricket ground always is, it is not necessarily illegal because it has been caused by a cricket ball.

What isn’t legal, in terms of the game, is for people to tamper with the cork-centered, yarn-wound, leather-bound, linen-stitched missile.

No sawn-off cricket balls, if you please. So here we are, days into the craziness of what happened after Australia were discovered to have used sandpaper to roughen the ball with the intent of improving their bowlers’ prospects of generating reverse swing on the third day of the third test against South Africa at Newlands on Saturday.

Apologies for the quasi-legalese, but cricket writers covering the test series haven’t been writing much about cricket since the Australians arrived a month ago.

Instead we’re getting a crash course in crossing and dotting of the granular details of a story that becomes less about the game with each added drama.

Not since Hansie Cronje and all that have South African cricket writers spent so much time and effort on events that didn’t happen on the field, or at least not in the full view of spectators.

Our colleagues in news and politics probably find this funny: welcome to journalism, sports lovers.

But, as yet, we haven’t looked on the other side of the ball-tampering fence. What if the practice was legalised?

Once lifting in the lineout just wasn’t rugby. Now handles are taped onto the jumpers’ thighs to make it easier for their teammates to pick them up effectively.

Is it that much of a reach into the unmentionable to wonder if balltampering is not only not that bad, but see that it adds to cricket as a spectacle and a contest rather then takes away from it?

Until the Pakistanis harnessed reverse swing as a legitimate tactic in the 1970s — before then it was a happy accident noone knew how to put to good use — once a ball was no longer new there was little for a fielding team under the cosh to do but wait until the umpires tossed them another new nut.

These days, as Faf du Plessis has said during the Aussie series, “We have guys queueing up to open the batting” because facing the reverse-swinging, older bowl has become such a challenge.

And that’s good in a game so weighted in favour of batsmen. To disagree is to align yourself with the old farts who think women can’t play cricket and that no floodlight should be allowed anywhere near a test match.

But there’s plenty of daylight between a naturally ageing ball and one that has been prematurely aged by, say, sandpaper.

A middle road would be to allow rubbing the ball on the ground and the use of fingernails to prise open the quarter-seam and scratch the leather. Don’t hold your breath.

The issue is what’s legal and what isn’t. And that’s decided by the Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC), the custodians of what cricket calls its “laws”.

“During the recent redrafting of the new code of laws, which coincided with other ball-tampering incidents, considerable thought was given to whether a change of the law was required,” Fraser Stewart, MCC’s laws of cricket manager, told the Sunday Times.

“MCC’s world cricket committee, cricket committee and laws subcommittee all discussed this subject in detail and determined that the current law provided the best balance between bat and ball.

“No laws are set in stone, and MCC will always keep things under review, but there are currently no plans for change.”

Ah well. Just a thought.