I remember a few years back going to watch a game of village cricket in which two of the counties better teams were up against each other in an early season game. The home team had posted a small but competitive score in an innings that had been disturbed by to the odd light shower one gets in early May.
The visitors went out to bat with bristling arrogance and no small measure of confidence that they would make the total in the 50 overs at their disposal. Their star batsman you see was opening and looked in dangerous form, having just scored four boundaries on his way to a fast 37.
But suddenly at the end of the fourth over he collided with a fielder trying to steal a single, that wasn’t there in order to retain the strike. The ball was retrieved and thrown to the keeper who broke the bails and appealed while the said batsman was stumbling on the ground halfway down the wicket. The umpire had no choice but to give him out since it was he who had intentionally impeded the fielder from getting the ball and making his own ground.
He went ape. His captain went ape. His teammates went ape. The home team, however, were unmoved. The appeal stood and the visitors skulked on the boundary mumbling about the death of the spirit of the game while they collapsed to a bad loss.
The recent BBL game made me think of this incident with a chuckle. Because it seems that the idea of the spirit of the game being abused always comes up when something like this happens.
Brendon McCullum is one of those players who does live by that spirit of course. Just think about the series he captained in England a few years back and the competitive though decent edge to the series that flies in the face of most series nowadays and you see he will back up his talk of fair play with actions. So when he spoke about how George Bailey failed the spirit of the game you know he isn’t “doing an Aussie” and complaining about someone doing something that he would do if roles were reversed.
Bailey is known as “a cricket good guy” but memories of him joining in the cowardly aggression towards outnumbered English batsmen during the Ashes four years ago show this is not true. He can be an ass on the field if it means he can win.
However, I have to side a wee bit with him here. I mean look, I wanted Brisbane to win. Mathew Wade is a prat in my books. Bailey is a bit shifty and well any team that has McCullum and Vettori involved and who nearly wins a game the way they did will always have me rooting for them. But I think Alex Ross did not try to avoid the ball. He ran back into the stumps after looking towards the fielder who was throwing it back in. It was a tad silly to deviate that much and even if he was not trying to block it gave the third umpire enough reason to think he had.
In this instance, Bailey was not at fault. He merely appealed for the runout and then left it to the umpire to sort out. Should he have called Ross back? Perhaps. But he wasn’t obligated to. Not considering the deviation in Ross’s line that seemed to show how he moved more in the way between the incoming ball and wickets.
Like the two rivals in the county premier league match there was a run out that happened because of the batsman trying to be clever, an appeal that could just as easily not have been made or upheld, and a captain tutting over the spirit of the game.
But most of all there was drama, that had all who witnessed it shaking with delight or anger, rubbing their hands for revenge or at the prospect of a rivalry starting. The players may feel hard done by, but this is the stuff that feeds the fans interest sparks off rivalries that could last forever and it is that which will make the game more meaningful.
The spirit of the game is a noble idea. But most players throw that over for the chance to win. My advice to Brisbane is to do like the visitors did. Get them back in the return fixture with a merciless thrashing. Mark this one down as locker room motivation. That’s the real spirit of the game.
The MCC shows why Alex Ross was out in this explanation of the law dealing with obstructing the field
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