In a sport where players are routinely penalised for sledging (a euphemism for abusive language), occasionally banned for cheating, and have been charged with match-fixing, invoking the “spirit of the game” slogan to showcase its noble intent seems a bit absurd.
Cricket probably means many things to many people. And those who have been repeatedly fed the British historic narrative that “to play cricket is to be fair” are shocked by what Ravichandran Ashwin did to Jos Buttler this IPL.
While in the bowling process, he stopped abruptly and ran an out-of-crease Buttler out. This mode of dismissal, rarely affected by a bowler, is known as “Mankading”, as it was done by India all-rounder Vinoo Mankad decades ago against an Australian in a Test.
So, what Ashwin did was not the first time how a bowler has — within the rules of the game — run a batsman out. Many others have done this in the post-mankading era, and it’s safe to say that more will follow.
Cricket was supposed to be a “pristine, pure” game that British aristocracy played. It advertised their gentlemanliness to the world; cheating — howsoever common it may have been — was “not cricket”.
We play cricket and hence we are fair and just. This was the message that the British Empire carried while spreading the sport in the countries they colonised, with India being no exception. It is a different matter that the laws of the game were vague, never properly defined, and had too many loopholes to exploit. And the players regularly did so.
Over the years, cricket has undergone a metamorphosis, reinventing itself in many formats. The latest in that is the T20, where the essence of the game is scoring as rapidly as possible, where even a stolen single could have a major bearing on the end result.
Many rules have been consistently updated, changed and modified, so that there is clarity to decision-making. But confusion remains, like till what point can a bowler be in his action mode to affect a run-out if he sees a batsman at his end leaving the crease.
Ashwin, according to the umpires that day, was well within the rules when he affected the run-out, though TV replays have not been so conclusive. Did he stop at the very moment of his delivery, wait for Buttler to leave the crease, and then dislodge the bails? There certainly is doubt and once again a lack of clarity in laws has created this confusion.
Among the many questions raised are not only whether he should have done it or not, should he have warned the batsman before finally doing it, or whether if his act was within the laws of the game in the first place?
The outrage in media just goes to show how cricket, despite being a sport like any other, is still in the grip of its moral and ethical framework that the British had espoused. There were many defenders of Ashwin, though I suspect that if this had happened to an Indian batsman at the hands of an “outsider”, the whole of India would have turned into a lynch mob and the bowler would have had to face the wrath of the nation.
The spirit of the game was a creation of its inventors, who wanted the rest of the world to believe in their “moral” superiority. But in its execution they were hypocritical, leaving its laws vague and also open to loose interpretation, which till this day has not been completely corrected.
Having said this, it is desirable to play a sport in a framework which does encourage fair play and discourage adopting means that go against the spirit of the rules. An impossibility in an age where winning is all that matters, even if the means adopted are dubious.