Hayter: These send-offs are going to get very messy!
When Jack Russell, the mad-as-cheese former Gloucestershire and England wicketkeeper, was batting there were two things he simply could not abide. The first was opposition players calling him by his real first name, Robert.
No one knows who started it, or why, or how he or she found out saying: “Morning, Robert,” when he came out to bat would get his goat, but it did and he could not stand it.
The second was silence, or, rather, not being sledged.
Often he used to crank up the chat himself to try and make sure he was sufficiently pumped up to achieve the levels of focus, concentration and, well, anger he felt he needed to be right on his game.
Over time, though, as the terrier within Jack calmed somewhat, neither tactic worked as well as it once had.
So Surrey’s David Ward, he of the unfeasibly large gnashers and the occasionally inspired sense of humour, came up with another plan.
Jack arrived at the crease, took guard and prepared to face his first ball.
Nobody had bothered to utter a word this time, not even the word “Robert”, but, just as the bowler turned on his mark to run in, Jack heard a cough emanating from under the lid at short leg where he looked down to see Ward, crouching, alert, ready for the catch, staring up at him intently and wearing a Comic Relief red nose. The innings did not last long. Contrast that with what we witnessed on the field in Dhaka the other night in yet another highly inflammatory example of the modern practice of giving dismissed batsman a “send-off”.
No matter how much his players might have enjoyed it, Buttler’s reaction to the behaviour of several Bangladesh players after the third umpire had overturned a lbw decision in their favour, should not be condoned and not just because he was leading the England side.
But the fact that this normally equable and softly-spoken character responded in he way he did, so forcefully that who knows what would have happened had the umpires not intervened, indicated just how close we came once again to a full scale punch-up in the middle of an international cricket match. And it has got to stop. Such behaviour as the Bangladesh players indulged in, as so many others from so many sides have done before, were it repeated in the High Street or outside the Mucky Duck at the weekend, would, in legal terms, be classified as common assault, where “one intentionally or recklessly causes another person to apprehend immediate and unlawful personal violence” in other words behaviour likely to provoke a fight.
So if it is not all right in the eyes of the law, how can it be tolerated on a cricket pitch, in front of a packed stadium full of impressionable kids and laid out for television viewing all over the world? Javagal Srinath, the ICC match referee did, of course, take action against two Bangladesh players, fining their skipper Mushrafe Mortaza and bowler Sabbir Rahman 20 per cent of their match fees and he also reprimanded Buttler for using bad language.
But players have been fined and reprimanded before and the “send-offs “still happen.
Both sides paid little more than lip service to their wider responsibilities afterwards. England coach Trevor Bayliss and other players publicly supporting Buttler and Mortaza even insisting: “Actually we didn’t do anything wrong so we
Buttler’s reaction indicated just how close we came once again to a full-scale punch-up in the middle of an international match
shouldn’t do that (apologise).”
It has also been suggested that Buttler’s red-faced comeback was a good thing because it showed the depth of his passion and commitment to his side and that he is no “pushover”, the same kind of things sometimes overheard by paramedics in the ambulance to Accident & Emergency on any given Friday.
So may I offer one simple solution for consideration; red and yellow cards and bans for repeat offenders – send off the send-offers before something goes badly wrong.
For while we’d all rather see red noses than red cards, if that is what it takes for the game to regain its sense of humour and its sense of perspective, maybe it is worth a try.