Sordid drama

Ludicrous; shameful; outlandishly brazen and a disgrace to the sport that is revered across the globe as being a gentleman’s game. These epithets are small when one tries to describe the sordid drama that unfolded in Cape Town on Saturday and which has torn the cricketing world asunder.

Cricket hit a newlow when the Australian team was caught red-handed in a fraud that was being committed right under the nose of on-field umpires Nigel Llong and Richard Illingworth and watched by millions who were glued to the live telecast on the third day of the third Test against South Africa at Newlands.

Quite ironically, the fraud was admitted by the visiting team skipper, Steve Smith, who only the other day was being compared to Don Bradman for his run-getting dexterity. If his confession that he was party to the tampering by his opener Cameron Bancroft drew condemnation from all over, what was more appalling was the grotesque manner in whichthe bosses running the all-powerful International Cricket Council (ICC) dealt with the issue and the way Cricket Australia (CA) CEO James Sutherland reacted when the crime was exposed.

Smith and David Warner relinquishing their respective mantles for the remainder of the match is not a solution, considering his admission that they had conspired to alter the condition of the ball. Butthe way ICC has responded to the crisis is bound to bring disrepute to Australian cricket, if not to the sport itself. It is ridiculous that a captain gets one Test ban and has to forfeit the match earnings for a crime that is as worse (if not more obnoxious) as match-fixing. After all, no player is greater than the game itself!

The whole world knows that Australians are notorious on several counts with sledging coming naturally to most of them. Instances of them indulging in on-field frauds to win matches or save them from near-disasters are one too many. Comparatively speaking, Douglas Jardine’s infamous ‘Bodyline’ tactics pale into insignificance because it was used to contain the on-the-rampage Bradman and his ‘Invincible’ band.

How can one forget skipper Greg Chappell advising his younger brother Trevor to bowl underhand or Dennis Lillee getting into a spat with JavedMiandad for a wrong call; Sunil Gavaskar nearly staging a walkout with Chetan Chauhan or the more draconian ‘Monkeygate’ involving Harbhajan Singh and Andrew Symonds.

There are enough instances that prove that Australians are lousy examples in a game that has produced gentlemen of the finest order and has been fortunate to have players of the extraordinary calibre of GR Vishwanath and Courtney Walsh, who exemplified sportsman’s spirit of the heart-warming kind, despite their respective team’s staring at imminent defeat.

Alas, the latest incident comes in the backdrop of a series of ugly sledging, send-offs, dissent against umpires’ decisions and an on the spur-of-the-moment walk-out. With its rather lenient ‘punishment’ against proclaimed offenders, the ICC is unabashedly living up to Imran Khan’s ‘white and black’ divide being engineered at the behest of the world governing body.