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Business News/ Opinion / Online Views/  Chris, not Stuart, Broad has sullied the spirit of cricket
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Chris, not Stuart, Broad has sullied the spirit of cricket

Stuart Broad did no wrong when he refused to ‘walk’. But another Broad—Chris—has constantly violated cricket’s spirit

Australian captain Michael Clarke (2nd Right) and bowler Ashton Agar (Right) show their frustration at England batsman Stuart Broad (2nd Left) after they unsuccesfully claimed his dismissal during the third day of the first Ashes cricket test match at Trent Bridge in Nottingham, central England, on 12 July. Photo: AFP (AFP)Premium
Australian captain Michael Clarke (2nd Right) and bowler Ashton Agar (Right) show their frustration at England batsman Stuart Broad (2nd Left) after they unsuccesfully claimed his dismissal during the third day of the first Ashes cricket test match at Trent Bridge in Nottingham, central England, on 12 July. Photo: AFP
(AFP)

When the Australians lost the first Ashes Test at Nottingham by 14 runs yesterday, a lot of the players, and their supporters, must have been bitterly cursing one man—Stuart Broad, the England all-rounder. Two days back, Broad had edged an Ashton Agar delivery to Australian captain Michael Clarke in the slips, and even though he knew he was out, did not “walk", but waited calmly for the umpire’s decision. To the Australians’ dismay—it had been a pretty thick edge—umpire Aleem Dar ruled that Broad was not out. But they could do nothing since they had used up their quota of decision review appeals. Broad was on 37 at that point. He went on to score 28 more runs. So he probably cost Australia the match. Conversely, he possibly won England the game.

The Australian press—and even a section of the British one—was up in arms. That hoary phrase “spirit of the game" was invoked. At the end of it all, though, this Test match, as close-fought and exciting as any Test can get, has been so full of irony, as far as the “spirit" and umpiring go, that one feels compelled to make a few points.

But this is a long piece, and much of what I shall say is perhaps already known and understood by any cricket lover. So if you don’t want to waste your time, go to the last four paragraphs.

OK, the ironies.

• The Australians should be the last ones to complain. No Australian in living memory has ever “walked", except for Adam Gilchrist, and certainly not Clarke. In the Adelaide Ashes test in January 2011, Clarke, then vice-captain, stood his ground after being caught by Graeme Swann in the slips and left only after the TV umpire gave him marching orders. Clarke later apologized on Twitter, saying that he was “just so disappointed, my emotions got best of me". However, the day after Broad “sullied" the “spirit of cricket", Clarke was caught behind, and asked for a review when he was given out. The decision went against him. The irony here is that the bowler was Broad.

The general Australian attitude to “walking", ingrained from the days of Ian Chappell as captain in the 1970s, is best summed up by Barry Richards who once said: “The only time an Australian walks is when his car runs out of petrol."

• What are umpires there for? The players’ job is to do their best to win the game. The umpires are there as judge, jury and executioner. They are also the most protected species in the game. The International Cricket Council (ICC) Code of Conduct rules are very tough on any player showing dissent at an umpire’s decision. You could just roll your eyes and let it all sink in for 10 seconds when given out lbw after the ball has practically punched a hole through your bat before hitting the pad, and get fined or suspended (ask Sourav Ganguly about that). So let everyone on the field do their job. If the cricket laws very strongly protect the umpire when he gives absurd decisions against the batsman, it is totally ironical that some of us demand that a batsman should “walk" when he knows he is out, without waiting for the umpire’s call. As Geoffrey Boycott, never a man to mince his words, avers: “The rules say that it’s ‘in the opinion of the umpire’ so it’s above things like ‘The Spirit of the Game’. I don’t see bowlers asking you back when the ball is sliding down leg."

In the one-off India-England Golden Jubilee Test at Bombay in 1979, England were in dire straits at 58 for five, when Bob Taylor was given out caught behind by umpire Hanumantha Rao, and Indian captain G.R. Vishwanath, in an astonishing display of “the spirit of the game", called Taylor back. Taylor went on to bat for another three hours, and gave able support to Ian Botham who walloped the hell out of India, took many wickets, and won the Test.

If the ICC Code of Conduct was in place then (it was not), Vishwanath should have been punished severely. Mike Brearley, the England captain, and without doubt one of the greatest thinkers of the game ever, later wrote that he was aghast at Vishwanath’s action. If captains started doing this, it would undermine the umpires’ authority and erode the very foundations of the game,

Today, umpires have access to technology of all sorts, and can easily use it to check any decision they take. If an umpire is so sure of what he has seen and heard that he does not ask for a second opinion, knowing very well that there will be endless TV replays, he is taking full responsibility for his actions. Let him be judged then; he should be ready for that. The players have nothing really to do with this.

• One more irony. In this Nottingham Test match, Jonathan Trott of England was given out lbw, even after England asked for a review. It is now clear that he had an inside edge onto the pad, and the technology did not work! The official explanation is that there was an “operator failure" on Hotspot, the infra-red imaging system used to determine whether the ball has struck the batsman, bat or pad. Trott, who is in current form one of the best batsmen in the world (check his Test and one-day averages, only Hashim Amla of South Africa is perhaps ahead of him in both), was given out wrongfully first ball, in spite of all the technology! Plus, he would possibly have been punished if he, as he walked back, he went from looking disconsolate (which he was) to grumbling and glaring.

• What is this “spirit of the game"? The irony here is that the ICC itself is unclear about it. Certain specifics are mentioned in its Code of Conduct, like dissenting to an umpire’s decision, pointing a dismissed batsman to the pavilion (when was the last time you saw a bowler punished for that?) and abusive language (which is a laugh; the fact that nasty and hurtful sledging is as much a part of the game today as crotch guards is known to everyone). The rest is all lumped together under a catch-all motherhood statement: any act that “is (a) contrary to the spirit of the game; or (b) brings the game into disrepute".

So, if you condemn a batsman for not “walking", shouldn’t you also condemn every bowler for appealing for an lbw when he knows that the ball pitched outside the leg stump, and every wicketkeeper for leaping in the air with joyous cries over a snick that never was? Let’s stop this hypocritical waffling and admit that this is a competitive sport and stoical acceptance of the umpire’s decision is what keeps the peace.

• The last irony. Seven or eight minutes into the second session on the fifth day of the Test match, 15 runs way from victory, Brad Haddin, who had played a heroic innings for Australia, was facing James Anderson. Haddin played at the delivery, and Matt Prior, the England wicketkeeper appealed for caught behind. Other English players too added their shouts to Prior’s, but did not look very convinced. Aleem Dar, the umpire, said not out, and England captain, Alastair Cook, who had not used either of the two decision reviews his team was entitled to, asked for one. That was smart thinking; Cook had nothing to lose and everything to gain. Many TV replays, snickometer scrutinies and Hotspot analyses later, Haddin was given out. The batsman looked devastated, but then, that was the unchallengeable immutable end. England had won, with the help of technology that superseded the human umpire on the ground, and—do not forget, which had let them down once, just two days back, in the Trott case.

The ironies are over. Let’s get to something that affects cricket far more than one Stuart Broad’s refusal to “walk". Just a month ago, Denesh Ramdin of the West Indies was suspended for two ODIs by an ICC match referee in a Champions Trophy match against Pakistan for claiming a catch that TV replays revealed had dropped out of his hands and touched the ground. The ICC referee who punished Ramdin on grounds of “violating the spirit of the game", was asked about Stuart Broad not walking. He replied that Stuart had done nothing wrong, and he had even texted Stuart jokingly, asking how he could keep such a straight face when he was blatantly out and the umpire didn’t see it. The match referee in question is Chris Broad, Stuart’s father.

Chris Broad played for England in the 1980s, and is remembered chiefly for not walking when the umpire ruled him out in a Test against Pakistan in 1987. Do a Google search, and you will easily find photos of Graham Gooch, the non-striker, with his hand on Broad’s back, urging him to leave the field. In the spirit of the game, Broad also knocked his stumps out of the ground (a very serious offence under the ICC Code of Conduct, which he implements now) after being bowled in the 1988 England-Australia Bicentennial Test. He was fined the maximum permitted £500 by the tour manager. In 1990, he joined the rebel tour to apartheid South Africa, and never played for England again.

The very fact that he is an ICC match referee—by definition a guardian of the morals of the game—and has been so for a decade, is a disgrace. As referee, he has repeatedly been accused of racism (possibly the most grievous offence under the ICC Code) by people ranging from Sunil Gavaskar to Shahid Afridi. Yet he continues to enjoy his powers. As far as one knows, Broad has never charged or punished a single non-Asian player!

This brazen hypocrisy and contemptible double standards from an ICC official—and by extension, ICC itself—is what should disturb, disgust and enrage us. I believe that Stuart Broad was right in not “walking", but I also believe that his father, through his audaciously shameless reaction to the incident, coming on the heels of his suspension of Ramdin, brings “the game into disrepute", Chris is the Broad who should be punished, not Stuart. The rest is all irony, which is a part of life—and cricket—that we can accept with a shrug and a muttered oath.

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Published: 15 Jul 2013, 11:19 AM IST
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