Time to end sad fallacy that this abuse is ‘entertainment’ PS
THE most depressing words of this young sporting year were spoken last week by Jimmy Anderson. By common consent, the England fast bowler is a gentle, pleasant, rather shy individual, whose attitudes change dramatically when he walks on to a cricket pitch. He then becomes a stage villain; angry, confrontational and abrasively insulting.
One of the more discordant sounds of a British summer is the distant drone of Anderson sledging his chosen victim. But he has no regrets; indeed, he is actually proud of his behaviour.
‘I don’t think at the moment there is any more sledging than there’s been in the history of cricket,’ he said. ‘I don’t think it should disappear from the game. I think it’s quite entertaining when it’s done in the right manner.’
Equally smug is the Australian wicket keeper Brad Haddin, who defended David Warner after the serial buffoon had been heard to bawl ‘ Speak English!’ at India’s Rohit Sharma. ‘We know the brand of cricket we want to play and Davey’s no different to all of us,’ said Haddin. ‘Every Australian team I’ve played in respects the game of cricket and respects the opposition. We’re pretty comfortable with the way we’re playing.’
He was supported by Australia’s coach Darren Lehmann, aka ‘Boof’. ‘If the ICC decides it’s not in the spirit of the game or we cross the line, it’ll come down on us,’ he said. ‘We’re always going to teeter pretty close to it, that’s just the way we play, but we’ve got to make sure we don’t cross it.’
Interestingly, Boof has some form on the disciplinary front. There was that unfortunate business in 2003, when he shouted ‘black *****’ in the dressing room after being run out against Sri Lanka at Brisbane. He was banned for five matches, thus escaping far too lightly. Then there was his jibe at England’s paceman Stuart Broad, shortly before the 2013-14 Ashes series Down Under: ‘I just hope the Australian public give it to him right from the word go for the whole summer, and I hope he cries and goes home.’ That’s Boof, one of nature’s line-crossers.
Now it is probably true that few people outside Australia take Lehmann seriously, but Anderson’s position is far more disturbing. For he sincerely believes that sledging, the crude, ugly, choreographed abuse of an opponent, is not only legitimate but ‘quite entertaining’. Andrew Flintoff exposed the fallacy of that approach in two concise sentences. ‘It seems you can walk onto the field, say anything you want about somebody and then walk off and forget about it,’ said Freddie. ‘You wouldn’t walk into somebody’s office and let rip at them for 10 minutes and then go for a cup of tea.’
Jonathan Agnew, the former England fast bowler and BBC cricket correspondent, expressed his concern rather more vigorously. ‘It’s all you hear on a field — “Knock his head off, knock his head off”,’ he said. ‘Cricket has gone too far. It shouldn’t be posturing, abusing.’
He defended aggressive bowling, but insisted: ‘It’s the histrionics, the nonsense, the prancing, the in-yourface nastiness. It’s become accepted, and actually it’s not acceptable at all.’
Agnew was absurdly attacked for his stand, on the grounds that cricketers have been behaving badly throughout the history of the game; as if oafishness was sanctified by custom. But he was undeniably correct. There is a worrying belief that the game alone is incapable of holding the public’s attention. Hence the search for trivial solutions and cheap gimmicks. Less a game, more a game show, in which nothing succeeds like excess.
Football has travelled some way along that path, with a turgid cast of self-promoting ‘characters’, along with talkSPORT, Robbie Savage, Joey Barton, and lashings of banal banter from mirthless celebs.
A wonderful game, intelligently administered, yet selling itself short by embracing embarrassing distractions.
As for professional boxing, it long ago abandoned any ambition to be treated as serious sport. The fighters themselves remain wonderful athletes and admirable people, but the sad old game is now a branch of showbusiness, with its ring walks and its trash-talk, its scripted threats and its phony feuds.
The sport which once gave us Ali and Frazier now offers Bermane Stiverne and Deontay Wilder, not to mention Tyson Fury and Dereck Chisora. The well is dry, the end is a matter of time.
If all this should sound unremittingly bleak, then the impression is false. Despite the dreary drip of resentful criticism, the 2012 Olympics left our sport in a healthier, more confident condition.
Despite an unprecedented number of counter-attractions, sport at large — and most prominently the crown jewel sport of cycling — is fighting the good fight for attention and participation.
Those of us who stood on the packed pavements to watch the Tour de France speed through the glories of the Yorkshire countryside will testify that the British respond to genuine sporting events like no other nation. We remain hopelessly in thrall to sport, yet that sport must be valid, authentic, untainted by contrivance.
And that is why Anderson’s remark was so concerning. For there is no right to abuse, no licence to insult. The belief such behaviour is ‘quite entertaining’ is the cod philosophy of the professional wrestling ring.
It is a great pity, for English cricket is currently facing all manner of demanding problems. Jimmy Anderson has made their solution no easier.