MARTIN SAMUEL: RABADA BAN JUST NOT CRICKET
Rules are rules. And after three official warnings, and one allegedly on the QT, nobody can argue Kagiso Rabada was unaware of the consequences of further transgressions. even so, only the most fanatical stickler can have been happy with yesterday’s news.
Banned from the deciding Test of four. Banned from a Johannesburg track that might at last have given him some assistance after the alien terrain of Port elizabeth. Banned for demonstrating the emotion, the passion, that is surely the heart of elite sport.
Banned by the body who think Test cricket is in such trouble they are considering shaving a full day’s play from the long-ball game.
Yet is it any wonder? If the ICC wish to consider why a younger audience might be less than compelled by their sport these days, maybe they should review precisely what has got Rabada suspended.
Not the simple totting up process, because we can all grasp that. It is impossible to argue against four demerit points across two years equating to suspension.
In Premier league football, five yellow cards after match week 19 results in a ban — in european matches it needs two bookings to miss the next game.
sport is familiar with the totting up procedure. Having received three demerit points, Rabada can have no complaints that the fourth brought sanction.
Why did he receive a demerit at all — that is the issue.
Rabada was disciplined for celebrating over-enthusiastically after taking Joe Root’s wicket.
Yet there was scant mention of it in reports on Thursday except to say that the bowler seemed very pleased. As he should have been. Root is an exceptional batsman. Rabada would have gone into the day seeing england’s captain as a prime target.
As south Africa’s fastest bowler this would have been a personal battle, one he had to win. Damn right he was happy to have bowled Root for 27. so he celebrated. Not in an aggressive way. He didn’t give Root what is described as a sendoff, as he did Zak Crawley in the second Test. That was the outburst that earned him a private reprimand. so he didn’t repeat it.
There were no verbals or expletives, no confrontation.
Rabada ran down the wicket, roaring his head off, got quite near to Root without making contact, then bent double, crouched and directed his screams at the wicket which, given the help it had afforded him, was highly appropriate.
And nobody cared. Not in the way that should have set the ICC’s antennae twitching. Root walked off without registering a noticeable response. Commentators went about describing the ball and the shot, not the aftermath. Reporters noted details and facts without ho t reaching for the smelling salts.
Yet umpires Rod Tucker and Bruce Oxenford took offence.
They must have done because they told on Rabada to match referee Andy Pycroft and the following morning the ICC were on Rabada’s case. For being stoked about taking the wicket of the england captain. As if st George’s Park wasn’t empty enough as it is, save for the tourists.
And, no, cricket cannot take the spectacle into account when ruling in disciplinary matters. The fourth Test in Johannesburg was a more appealing prospect with Rabada in south Africa’s ranks. The Wanderers is the quickest wicket of south Africa’s Test grounds and ‘fast and bouncy’ was the promise. Watching Ben stokes take on Rabada promised pro ised great spectacle a and d now o that has been lost. Yet it is not a mitigating factor.
The issue is emotion. Why is cricket so scared of it? This is a sport in which men routinely pitch a hard ball directly at the body of an opponent.
There is a low target of three wooden sticks, but fast bowlers often aim higher, at the head, to intimidate and scare. And then we wonder why emotion runs high?
Former england captain Nasser Hussain spoke of the sport demanding 11 robots and was taken to task by former West Indies fast bowler Michael Holding.
‘As a player you know the conditions under which the ICC have put down their code of conduct,’ he said.
‘Do not abuse it. Rabada has to
learn. lear He ca can’t ’t keep o on making aki g the same mistake.’
He had a point, although the sermon was undermined by pictures on social media of Holding kicking the stumps out of the ground at the batsman’s end, in protest at having an appeal denied in a Test with New Zealand 40 years ago. It’s an emotional game, as South Africa’s head coach Mark Boucher explained.
Now Boucher might not be the ICC’s idea of a go-to guy when discussing on- field etiquette. Opponents recall him as a ferocious sledger who cared little for the sensibilities of those he was trying to dislodge.
Yet his take on Rabada was reasoned. The player had to adapt to the new rules, he counselled — but the new rules had to find a balance around competitive emotion.
ONe of his other demerits followed the dismissal of Steve Smith. Name a bowler who would take that in his stride. ‘I didn’t think there was anything wrong with it,’ said Boucher. ‘We voiced our concerns when the rule was quoted at us. They talked about excessive celebrations in the area of the batter and making contact. I don’t think he made contact with Root at all. He knows what he can and cannot do, so maybe he pushed a little too far.
‘I’m worried about the way it is going. There are a few things happening at the moment where teams are going for a win, pushing hard, like england in the last Test.
‘They had been in the field a long time and the swear words weren’t great but it’s just emotion. We would push hard and try to make batsmen feel uncomfortable, too. I can see where the ICC want to go with it, but I hope they don’t take emotion out of the game because it should play a very big part.
‘In our days we could pretty much say what we wanted and get away with it, so it’s a learning curve for me, too. I’m disappointed. Then again, if you know the rules, you’ve got to stick with them.
‘Kagi bowls at his best when he’s aggressive, so it’s about keeping that but also understanding the laws and where they are now. He’ll have to address that.’
As will a great many cricketers if this is the new normal. Ollie Pope, the hero of england’s day, sounded as surprised as anyone that he will not be facing Rabada at The Wanderers.
‘It’s not a subject that’s been spoken about in the dressing room,’ he said. ‘ Not something we’ve talked about.’
The ICC solved a problem nobody had. Celebrating the fall of a good batsman. It’s just not cricket, apparently.
‘You don’t want to take all of the emotion out of the game’