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| Another one bites the dust |
| Suveen K Sinha / New Delhi Feb 07, 2010, 00:00 IST |
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Ball tampering has been a part of cricket for years and won’t go away anytime soon.
Shahid Afridi, banned for two T20 matches for tampering with the ball, can claim credit for a few things. For the most amusing response, for instance. “I was just trying to smell it,” he said, after being caught on camera gnawing at the ball as Pakistan lost an ODI at Perth, in which he was the captain.
He also inspired original responses from others. “Probably he was trying to eat an apple,” said Intikhab Alam, who would have done better to say that he was clueless and flummoxed. Graeme Smith, feasting on the controversy, said: “Perhaps he didn’t appreciate the lunch given in Australia.” As would be expected of a deft marketing hand, Afridi’s manager Umran Khan managed to see the silver lining. “Shahid’s desire to win was there for all to see,” he gushed. Others wondered if Afridi was drunk, and still others whether there was a bet.
Amid the clamour, the more serious issue is going unheeded. According to Afridi, everyone does it, which may not be the whole truth, but is not the whole lie either.
At the beginning of the 1990s, ball tampering was the big issue in cricket. Imran Khan admitted to gouging one side of the ball with bottle tops. The needle of suspicion was never too far from the unplayable reverse swing generated by Wasim Akram and Waqar Younis. A year after becoming England captain at the age of 25, Mike Atherton (now a celebrated cricket writer) was seen taking something — supposedly dirt — from his pocket and rubbing it on the ball. The issue, though overshadowed by the more unsavoury match-fixing scandal that broke out at the turn of the century, continued to simmer. Eight years after Atherton’s dirt, Sachin Tendulkar was punished in 2002 for seemingly trying to lift the seam of the ball with his thumbnails, though he said he was merely removing dirt. The tampering row was reignited recently when England’s James Anderson and Stuart Broad, in the third Test in South Africa, were caught on television doing something which appeared to be illegal with the ball.
Afridi may have bitten off more than he can chew, but he may have provided the rule makers with an opportunity to revisit the laws. As the rules and technologies have made cricket a batsman’s game, bowlers have been striving for that little something that will keep them in the game. Roughing up one side of the ball, while keeping the other shiny, aides reverse swing, which few batsmen have been able to face with aplomb. Alan Donald, the former South African fast bowler, also called White Lightening, has said that bowlers must be allowed to “prepare” the ball to redress the balance between the bat and the ball to protect the “dying breed” from lifeless pitches. Donald is not the first to suggest legalising ball tampering. As far back as the mid-1990s, Richard Hadlee had suggested just that.
(suveen.sinha@bsmail.in)
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