This funny thing called cricket

Friday,  December 23, 2005   

Cricket is a ‘funny’ game. I guess that makes cricketers ‘funny’ people. But it’s not always easy to see the humour.

In the aftermath of the drawn opening Test between South Africa and Australia I read comments by Aussie pacer Glen McGrath, that supported the decision of his captain Ricky Ponting to delay a second innings declaration in order to give middle order batsman Brad Hodge time to secure his maiden Test double century.

Hodge, who made his Test debut in the recently concluded series against the West Indies, scored 203 not in the second innings of the opening match against South Africa.

An article on the Cricinfo website revealed that Ponting had admitted his intention to declare before tea on the penultimate day but delayed his decision, with the blessing of his players, to allow Hodge to reach ‘a deserved milestone’.

“Every guy in the team wanted Hodgy to go on and get the double hundred,” McGrath told AAP.

“Ricky did float it around the boys, so it wasn’t a decision he made by himself, all the guys were happy. We’ve generally bowled teams out in under a day, so nobody had any problems with it at all. I’d back us nine times out of ten to knock a team over in that time,” said the fast bowling legend.

Jacques Rudolf made a mockery of McGrath’s seeming arrogance as he scored an unbeaten century, batting throughout the final day, to save the match for South Africa with only five wickets down.

The scenario reminded me of a similar situation when Brian Lara delayed his declaration against England in a dead rubber contest at the Antigua Recreation Ground last year. Lara went on to score an unbeaten 400, breaking the 400 run barrier in Test cricket and reclaiming the world record for highest score in an innings’ from the Australian Matthew Hayden.

At that time Ponting was highly critical of the West Indies captain.

“It’s hard to imagine an Australian player doing it,” Ponting told AAP.

Even then it seemed a strange comment since Ponting had allowed Hayden the chance to break Lara’s record against Zimbabwe. He attempted to justify it by saying,

“It’s generally not the way we play our cricket. Their (West Indies) whole first innings may have been geared around one individual performance and they could have let a Test match slip because of it. They ran out of time in the game. That’s not the way the Australian team plays.

At the time Ponting’s comments were devalued by his own admission that Hayden had been allowed time not only to overtake Lara’s 375 but to attempt to reach 400. This latest episode marks his sentiments as total rubbish.

It is the right of any individual to speak his mind but I believe the captain of an international cricket team must go the extra mile to ensure he speaks with sincerity.

My attention was also focused recently on complaints from the South African team of racist remarks made to some of their players by sections of the Australian crowd. I can imagine they would have been as incensed over what they believe they heard as all rounder Dwayne Bravo had been when he claimed he had heard racist remarks made towards him by South African captain Graeme Smith in the series played in the Caribbean earlier this year.

Hopefully in this case there was no mis-understanding, as the Australian public would then have as much right to be offended as Smith apparently was by Bravo’s charge.

Racism has no place in sport. The incident with Bravo and Smith emphasized the danger in sledging. This new incident could provide even more evidence of the need to eliminate this distasteful practice even when carried out by spectators. The cultural divides are too great and easily facilitate distortion.

Here in the West Indies I have also been following the ‘funny business’ related to the Stanford 20/20 issue. The WICB seems to be insisting that they determine how Stanford can spend his millions.

A statement signed by the six member territories of the WICB was published recently and read as follows.

“Visits to our respective territories have been made by envoys of Mr. Stanford and we have indicated general interest in his proposal to offer funding. But we have made it clear that we expect these arrangements to be pursued through our collective participation at the level of the West Indies Cricket Board. Anything else would suggest an attempt to create duplication and division within West Indies cricket, which we do not believe is Mr. Stanford’s intention.”

At this time I see no evidence to suggest that Mr. Stanford has any motive other than to use his financial resources to uplift West Indies cricket. However the Packer affair was considered to be creating duplication and division when Kerry Packer introduced a similar initiative at the international level in the seventies. It revolutionized cricket to the benefit of the players, spectators and the sport generally.

Such is the current state of West Indies cricket and the WICB that this seemingly independent Stanford intervention may be exactly what it needs.

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