Yesterday, during the 3rd ODI in the tri-series being played amongst India, New Zealand and Sri Lanka, an ugly incident happened on the last ball of the match. The scores were level, and India, chasing, needed just one more run to win the match. Virender Sehwag, the man on strike was on 99 and needed just one more to reach his century. Suraj Randiv, a new-comer in the Sri Lankan side, bowled a huge no-ball, that even his best defenders would find hard to explain as accidental. Sehwag lofted the ball for a six, but because the no-ball had been bowled, and by virtue of the same, India had already won the match, the six weren’t counted in Sehwag’s runs, and he was stranded on 99.
Both Sehwag and the Sri Lankan captain, Kumar Sangakkara played down the incident in the post-match conference, but immediately thereafter, both expressed their real view – Sehwag openly claiming that it was a deliberate no-ball to not allow him to reach his century, and recalled a similar incident when last year Sachin Tendulkar was similarly denied the chance to reach his 100 when during the Cuttack ODI, Lasith Malinga bowled a huge wide on the leg side, which went for 4 byes, and India won the match, leaving Sachin stranded on 96. And Sangakkara demonstrated by his actions thereafter that even he wasn’t convinced enough that the no-ball wasn’t so indeliberate.
The question arises, why do such incidents happen? Are cricketers so unsporting? School-boys are likely to resort to such tricks to gain an emotional high, but national cricketers? Well, the real reason we may never know – but I can only say that this is the killer instinct of the sportsperson that comes to the fore in an ugly manner – win at all costs or lose but deny moral victory. Without a doubt, such incidents are in very poor taste. I am sure no IPL team (specially Delhi Daredevils) will want to touch Randiv for the next season – so, while sportsman-spirit and the game of cricket has definitely lost due to this incident, the ultimate loser could well be Randiv himself, and befittingly so, if you ask me. In fact, Sangakkara publicly rebuked him in front of the dressing room immediately after the post-match conference. So, clearly, even his captain believes that Randiv did not show the right mettle on the field.
However, such incidents are not new to cricket, or to any other sport. Sportsmen, howsoever big they might be, have a cheating streak in them. We saw the Hand of God of Maradona in 1986, and very recently (this year itself) Henry’s hand goal in football. In fact, soccer players are actually the greatest actors on the field, the way they feign injuries to try and get a yellow or red card awarded to the opposition and increase their chances of victory. But they are not alone in this world of cheats. Ben Johnson, the Canadian sprinter who created a world record of 9.79 seconds in winning the 100 meters race in the 1988 Olympics, was found to be on steroids, and his Olympic Gold medal was taken away and his records erased. Cricket has its own moments of infamy, and I’d like to recall some of them just so that we do not feel this is the first time such things have happened, of that they happen to us Indians only.
Let’s go back three decades to that day in 1981, and an Australian cricketer named Trevor Chappell. Australia and New Zealand were playing the final of the Benson and Hedges World Series Cup. New Zealand needed to score six runs to tie the match from the final ball. Not wanting to chance this, Greg Chappell (yes, our very own not-so-famous national team coach, Guru Greg), Australia’s captain and Trevor’s brother, asked Trevor to roll the ball along the ground to batsman Brian McKechnie so that he could no way hit it for a six. A visibly agitated McKechnie could do little but block the ball, and Australia won the game. Although it was not illegal to bowl underarm at the time, it was widely accepted to be contrary to the spirit of the game. It was described as “the most disgusting incident I can recall in the history of cricket” by the then New Zealand Prime Minister. Such was the outcry at the incident that, immediately thereafter, the cricketing rules were changed to make underarm bowling illegal.
While on Australians, we all know how, despite being a world champion side, they are sore losers. I am sure every Indian will recall that boxing day match of 2008 against India, when Andrew Symonds refused to walk on 3 occasions despite being clearly out, just because the umpires (Steve Bucknor and Mark Benson) did not give him out, just so that Australia reached a world record of 16 continuous test victories. I have nothing against Symonds (in fact I adore him as a competitive cricketer), and he was well within the rules of the game to not walk if not given out by the umpire, but talking of sporting spirit… well that one lost out.
Incidentally, that match is momentously filled with incidents of blatant cheating by Aussies, ably assisted by the umpires. Adam Gilchrist claimed a catch off Dravid that nobody in the world (and in the least possible way, Gilchrist, who I think normally had a very good head & heart – contrary to team tactics, he always walked when out) would have claimed; very clearly the ball touched thin air only and the bat was always far away from contact. Ponting and Slater refused to walk despite being clearly out. In the very same match, Ricky Ponting became a self appointed ‘third umpire’ in giving Sourav Ganguly out!
But, before you start imaging that Indians are always wronged, let me point out that in that test, even Ponting got it on the wrong side. Mark Benson was the first to get into the act of such bloopers, when he ruled Ponting not out when the Aussie skipper got an edge to a Sourav Ganguly delivery drifting down leg. Ponting stood his ground and went on to make 55. The next day, visibly under pressure after the replays gave away what the umpires were up to, Benson decided two wrongs will make a right and ruled Ponting out lbw to Harbhajan despite a thick inside edge.
The other umpire in the test, Steve Bucknor, on the other hand, has a history of such fortuitous incidents going against India, and the list is so very long that I will refrain from putting it up here. I’ll mention only one incident which amply depicts Bucknor’s mindset and deeds against India, when Steve Bucknor’s huge blooper cost Sachin Tendulkar at Brisbane in the previous tour – when he was given leg before even as the ball thudded against his helmet!
England have had their own moments, when Nasser Husain, the then England captain asked his bowlers on an India tour in 2001 to continuously bowl a negative line to India to deny them a victory in Bangalore. Not illegal; but unethical nonetheless.
Pakistanis have had their own flirtations with ball-tampering (including Afridi chewing the ball) and have even forfeited a match when Australian umpire, Darrell Hair imposed a 5-run penalty on them for ball tampering which they refused to accept and decided not to walk back on the field. That notwithstanding, I need not remind anyone of Darrell Hair’s open bias against sub-continental teams; in fact, he did not give Pakistan a fair trial in the same match where he declared that they had tampered the ball and branded them cheats. Out of 26 Sky cameras installed at The Oval, none picked any tampering. The Pakistan captain, Inzamam, wasn’t asked to explain. He was not shown the original ball that was allegedly tampered with. They were just handed down the sentence.
Another incident involving umpiring bias and the Indians which stood out blaringly was the ban on three Indian players (including Virender Sehwag) by match-referee Mike Denness on a tour to South Africa in 2001 for ‘over-appealing’. In fact, Sehwag was fined 20% of his match fee in the same match for celebrating a dismissal before conferring with the umpire! Such behaviour is strange to interpret as umpires have no stake in the match outcome and the result, and they are there to ensure fairplay; but such incidents show that they can also be biased… after all, they are also human.
Former England captain, Marcus Trescothick claimed in his autobiography that England's players achieved their prodigious amount of reverse swing in their successful 2005 Ashes series against Australia by using saliva sweetened by eating mints – something that the rules do not allow. Even the God of cricket, Sachin Tendulkar, has had one incident (I know I am fishing in troubled waters here), when he was accused of ball-tampering on the basis of TV evidence in South Africa. In the second test match between India and South Africa at St George's Park, Port Elizabeth in 2001, match referee Mike Denness (surprise, surprise… he features once more) suspended Sachin Tendulkar for one game in light of alleged ball tampering when television cameras picked up images that suggested Tendulkar may have been involved in scuffing the seam of the cricket ball.
So, there is no saint in the game of cricket, which sadly, is no more a gentleman’s sport.
© Shailesh Nigam, Varun Khanna (for respective articles)
