Don't Rob Cricket Of Excitement

There is a strong message for the cricket authorities in Brian Lara condemning the ICC fining Wahab Riaz for showing a bit of 'aggro' to Shane Watson in the World Cup quarter final between Pakistan and Australia in Adelaide on March 20.

Impressed by the Pakistani's hostile spell peppered with express short-pitched deliveries and followed up with several gestures, including a flying kiss, aimed more at unnerving rather than intimidating the already clueless Aussie, Lara, who has seen it all and much more besides when the West Indies used to boast of an array of devastating fast bowlers, went on to twist the ICC's ear further by saying that he would pay Riaz's fine.

The West Indies legend deserves a pat on the back for the stand he has taken. Indeed, cricket will be robbed of much of its charm and romance and thrill if the ICC becomes a bit too harsh on the players getting into some sort of altercation or those indulging in a little sledging as long as it does not fray tempers and force the Match Referee to step in.

Too much of goodness in any sport makes it a dull contest; most certainly team sports like cricket, football and hockey. What is the point of playing a sport utterly devoid of two vital ingredients — excitement and competitiveness? At the most it will remain a pastime, nothing else. It is sheer hypocrisy to carry on playing for the sake of appearing to be good.

"Serious sport has nothing to do with fair play. It is bound up with hatred, jealousy, boastfulness, disregard of all rules and sadistic pleasure in witnessing violence," wrote the great English novelist George Orwell. Orwell, famous for his iconoclasm, did not mean the willow game when he made that profound statement.

Though cricket has much to do with "fair play", it is nevertheless a "serious sport"; and if Orwell had seen the likes of Harold Larwood and Jeff Thomson firing on all cylinders on the greentops down under, he would certainly have called it one.

The fact is cricket continues to be played on the frontiers of gamesmanship under the self-proclaimed pompous title of being a gentlemen's game. Even in the Victorian era, when some sports zealots first floated the idea of cricket being a gentlemen's game, it had failed to put on its hypocritical mask comfortably.

For all his achievements and greatness, W.G. Grace was all but a gentleman cricketer and stories of his cheating abound. Apocryphal or real, he once told an umpire, when given out lbw: "They've come to see me bat, not you, umpire." How interesting. How exciting.

The best of sports are played with an element of competitiveness. No cheating, no gamesmanship, only ruthless competitiveness. The secret lies in drawing the right line between competitiveness and cheating or gamesmanship. And soft rather than stinging sledging, including a fast bowler's prerogative 'aggro', should be considered an integral part of the cutting edge competitiveness in cricket's modern era. The ICC seems to have forgotten that Australia, too, has a Riaz-like fast bowler in Mitchell Johnson, who not only exudes 'aggro' but is also a master sledger.

"Fast bowling is the pulse and rhythm of cricket. There can be no dull play when a fast bowler is in full swing," said Neville Cardus, who had seen many purveyors of pace, not just Wes Hall and Fred Trueman. Who can disagree with the one and only knight among cricket writers?

"Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, if Lillee don't get you, Thommo must." This was the clarion call down under in the 1970s, when the peerless Dennis Lillee and Jeff Thomson were at their fiery best and relentlessly targetting the batsmen. And no one was complaining. You either went out there in the middle and faced the music, or simply returned to the pavilion.

Even in the 1980s, when first Clive Lloyd and then Vivian Richards were marshalling their four-pronged pace attacks studded with destructive fast bowlers, the batsmen had to fend for themselves. The ICC did not come to their rescue. It did, of course, when it clipped the wings of the fast bowlers by restricting them to only two bouncers an over.

Riaz resorted to only gesticulation and glare after scaring Watson with his thunderbolts. But many fast bowlers have mastered the art of adding injury to insult or, in other words, using a verbal volley following a spell of short-pitched stuff.

The fearsome Malcolm Marshall was once bowling to David Boon. The stockily-built Australian opener was all at sixes and sevens, playing and missing, against the little big West Indian. Taking advantage of Boon's plight, Marshall sledged: "Now, David, are you going to get out or am I going to have to come round-the-wicket and kill you?"

Merv Hughes, that giant Australian quickie, had perfected the art of sledging. In one Test match he was all over Graham Gooch. "Would you like me to bowl a piano and see if you can play that?" he asked the otherwise prolific Essex and England opener with his tongue firmly in his cheek.

Cricket is heavily loaded in favour of batsmen, who enjoy the luxury of an assortment of protective gears, including the helmet. In comparison, fast bowlers operate with a number of restrictions. They get punished for overstepping and bowling wide and, worse still, they cannot bowl more than two bouncers per over. Also, they cannot bowl more than their limited quota of overs in Twenty20 matches and ODIs.

In shorter versions of the game in particular, a bowler has to do all he can to achieve maximum results in the limited number of overs available to him. So if he bowls the way Riaz did against Australia, specifically Watson, and indulges in a bit of sledging without crossing the limit, the ICC should grant him this luxury, not punish him.

And what excitement it brought into the game. Here was a superbly charged-up fast bowler against an experienced batsman in his own den, reducing him to a novice floundering at the crease. It was quite a spectacle, the piece de resistance of a World Cup dominated by big hitters with their big scores on smaller grounds. Everybody is still talking about it in glowing terms. But the ICC, as is its wont, is not amused.