Remembering ‘Spirit of Cricket’ when it suits you

by Rex Clementine

The Prime Ministers of United Kingdom and Australia have been drawn into the debate of ‘Spirit of Cricket’ after England wicketkeeper Johnny Bairstow was stumped by his opposite number Alex Carey in the recent Lord’s Test. There was uproar after the incident as MCC members reacted angrily in the Long Room towards the Australian players and three of them had been suspended with MCC issuing an unreserved apology to the Australian team.

Politicians joining cricket debates is nothing new. We had a brilliant Foreign Minister in Lakshman Kadirgamar whose ‘shopping is for sissies’ comment created quite a stir in Australia in 1995. He was invited by the Australian Foreign Minister to his hometown in Adelaide to watch a game involving Sri Lanka and Australia and Kadirgamar returned home by telling the diplomat that ‘Australia had won by a hair’. This was during the height of the chucking controversy with umpire Darrel Hair amidst thick of things.

The cricketing world is deeply divided with the Aussies insisting that they had played by the Laws of cricket while the English have been reminding them that same old Aussies are always cheating. A couple of former England captains such as David Gower and Michael Atherton have spoken sense by saying they had no problems with the dismissal.

England Head Coach Brendon McCullum, however, feels that the appeal should have been withdrawn by Australia’s captain as it was contrary to Spirit of Cricket.

There was this Test match between Sri Lanka and New Zealand in Christchurch’s old cricket ground – Lancaster Park – when last man Muttiah Muralitharan stepped out of the crease after completing a run to congratulate Kumar Sangakkara, who had reached three figures. McCullum, the New Zealand wicketkeeper took the bails off and appealed as the ball wasn’t dead. Murali was given out and there was quite a bit of bad blood between the teams from thereon. McCullum did apologize a few years after the incident during his MCC Cowdrey Lecture, but by then he had done the same on a few other instances as well and no one was talking about Spirit of Cricket on those instances.

Guess who has joined the debate? Stuart Broad, the man who edged to first slip and still wouldn’t walk. He wants no harm to be done to the Spirit of Cricket.

England is a terrific place to travel and their fans generally are a good sport. But their cricket team when things don’t go theire way tend to harp on ‘Spirit of Cricket’.

In this instance of Bairstow’s dismissal, the stumping happened less than a second after the ball had reached the gloves of the wicketkeeper and the batsman had no business to wander around.

It’s been sloppy cricket by England. They were the ones who declared on day one of the first Test with Joe Root on a hundred. Since then, they have been playing catch up and if not for the Bairstow dismissal could have gone onto square the series chasing down the big 371 run target. Eventually, they lost by 43 runs. They are trailing 2-0 because they have played sloppy cricket and not because Australia played the game in poor spirit.