Much Ado About Nothing: The New Tradition Wars in Cricket

As the cricket season winds down in the Southern Hemisphere, two highly-charged issues have made the headlines for all the wrong reasons: umpiring and ball-tampering. The former is a long-running grumble among players and spectators alike, who are apparently torn between preserving "tradition" and getting more accurate umpiring decisions in matches. The latter is also a long-standing grumble, or perhaps a whine, made primarily by batsmen and batsmen-turned-administrators who invariably position themselves against bowling "cheats" as custodians of the game's hallowed traditions and morals. Whereas the indiscretions of umpires such as Mark Benson and Daryl Harper have brought the UDRS under the traditionalists' scanner, Shahid Afridi's recent ball-biting frenzy has outraged the holy cows pasturing on cricket fields or in living rooms. Nevertheless, I want to argue here that both issues are, overtly or covertly, the handiwork of cricket's conservatives, who use "tradition" as a red herring to somehow preserve a dysfunctional set-up that is nonetheless favorable to them.

Let's begin with the butt of many new cricketing jokes, the Umpiring Decision Review System (UDRS), which is supposed to have been available at all Test matches since 1 October 2009. (That this is not the case is basically due to the bullying tactics of the cash-rich Board for Cricket Control in India, who don't care much for the system.) The new system allows batsmen and bowlers to ask umpires to review their decisions if they believe they've gotten a raw deal. In order to prevent abuse and save time, every team is allowed at most two unsuccessful reviews per innings or four per Test match. So far, so good. The empirical argument favoring the new system is pretty clear now: the accuracy of decisions during the trial period in 2008-09 rose from 95-97% earlier to around 99%. What does that mean in real terms? Consider that there are 40 wickets in each Test, so if we reasonably suppose 2.5 appeals per wicket based on past experience, we have roughly 100 appeals per match. What the ICC is saying here is that the new system has reduced the average number of errors per game from 3-5 to 1. This is, I think, a pretty big deal. We are still not error-free, but we are getting closer to that elusive ideal using better and newer technologies as they now become available.

So what's the problem according to the defenders of "tradition"? For starters, some people in bowler hats and tweed suits are lamenting the good ol' days when the umpires, like schoolmasters, commanded real respect. The new generation, they and their colonial cousins say, are just going completely astray. I hardly need to point out that those who make such specious arguments invoking "tradition" are also pretty likely to look back fondly at the good ol' days of empire and white hegemony worldwide. I frankly don't feel the need to listen to such "people" (if that's what they are) seriously. But I do take seriously the argument that the game may lose a source of human touch. This is deceptively true insofar as it invokes Dickie Bird, Dave Shepherd, Venkat, etc, as wonderful characters that graced the game with their presence. But let's be clear here: people don't watch cricket to watch umpires! Let's also not forget that the actions of a "good" umpire named Steve Bucknor set in motion the UDRS trials in the first place. There is, however, a final and cleverer argument, that the UDRS is no more fair than the "traditional" set-up. Ian Chappell has made this argument most forcefully in recent times: unless, he says, there is justice for all under some new system, we should not be satisfied by justice for some. I disagree. Any new arrangement that reduces umpiring errors by 2-4% is a bloody more fair system than anything preceding it. I'm afraid my beloved Chappelli has it wrong here. His is sadly no more than an old-timer's rant against the ravages of time. We ought to listen respectfully from one ear and cast it out quickly from the other. "Tradition" is simply a red herring here for a range of people who, for varied reasons, do not want to accept with Tennyson that "the old order changeth, yielding place to new." Well, tough luck, chums! And goodbye...

Now let's turn to the global hullabaloo over Shahid Afridi's ball-tampering in Australia. The English and Australians are now grinning and saying "we always told you the Pakis are cheats." Indian fans, especially after the unfairness meted out to Pakistani players by Lalit Modi & Co., have found much to cheer with their usual mix of jingoism and sadism. The Pakistani public and media are, on the contrary, profusely apologetic in deference to good colonial custom: "Yes, sahib, we did big wrong. Please punish." Inzamam-ul-Haq was so shocked that he rushed out of the oblivion of his local sweetshop in Multan to denounce Afridi's "disgraceful" behavior, hoping no doubt that his captaincy at The Oval in 2005 will not be associated with the recent Perth incident. as part of a seamless narrative of dubious Pakistani morals. Yet there are the inevitable murmurs going back to Wasim and Waqar in 1993 or even to Imran and Sarfraz in the late '70s. Somehow, those who couch their arguments in terms of "tradition" have now rediscovered their voices to condemn Afridi, and by implication, Pakistani cricket.

Well, here's my honest response: bollocks! The defenders of "tradition" are almost all batsmen or former batsmen, who have been the old aristocracy of this sport since the days of W.G. Grace. The good doctor is rumored to have told an uppity opponent: "They've come to watch me bat, son, not to see you bowl." Bowlers are, not just figuratively, the working class yeomen of the game since the late 19th century. Pacemen like Fred Truman and Alec Bedser actually came from the coal-mining towns in the industrial north of England, so their talents were always offset by class prejudice in English dressing rooms by the snotty Oxbridge batsmen in their striped MCC ties. The class prejudice may have ended formally in English teams, but it lingers on worldwide. The balance between bat and ball has tilted to such an extent that a recent one-day match was called off after nearly half an innings simply because a couple of balls (out of nearly 150) threatened the Sri Lankan sissies at the crease. Pancake-flat pitches are, of course, very much the norm nowadays everywhere, though the complaints are muted because India's winning record abroad has improved in the flat-pitch era. The IPL is a ziggurat-like monument to this very prejudice in favor of the bat: sixes, not wickets, is what the public want to see. Oh really? Did Indian fanatics enjoy the thumping their team received from the bats of Hayden and Ponting in key tournament finals? Do the TRP ratings rise whenever the team batting first had piled up a billion-odd runs? Or do they actually plummet because the contest is effectively killed halfway through the game?

What we're dealing with here is blatant prejudice against bowlers. Declaring ball-tampering as an illegal activity reflects that ancient prejudice in a modern garb. Long before Imran Khan taught his proteges to "make" a ball, county cricketers knew and applied these workaday skills. Yet no one said much; it was simply assumed as part and parcel of the game. A year before he died, the wise Bob Woolmer wrote an earnest plea to bring these "dark arts to light" for two reasons: firstly, there is nothing inherently wrong in using naturally-available materials on a cricket field such as nails, sweat, lozenges, saliva, or even teeth to "work" on the ball; secondly, any activity under the present circumstances that evens out the balance between the bat and ball ought to be welcomed anyway. I quite agree. This is obviously not a "cultural" argument about Pakistani cricket, as Ramiz Raja has foolishly argued today, but a global one. The law ought to apply to everyone or none at all. Yet there is an addendum here about Pakistan. They are the perennial "bad boys" of the game, partly because Big Brother next door envies their cricketing skills and hates their guts, and partly because the former white custodians of the game find them to be easy target for their racism in a politically-correct age. Just like Pakistan has come to be associated with "terrorism" in the North Atlantic world, it has become associated with the sin of "ball-tampering" in the cricketing commonwealth. That this is unfair and discriminatory hardly takes a genius to realize. Yet surprisingly few people state the bleeding obvious (though there seems to be no scarcity of Modi-lovers among the cricketing fraternity or in corporate boardrooms).

To cut a long story short, we find here yet another attempt to re-define "tradition" to suit conservative interests in the game. In one case, it's the no-changers up to no good. In the other, it's the old batting aristocracy at it again! To both sets of conservatives, I offer a one-way discounted trip to Pluto. Until that happens, however, there are some serious wars to be fought over tradition in order to revitalize the radical currents that have always animated the game at its finest. Let's start by asking a couple of tough questions of the conservative defenders of "tradition." Do Lalit Modi's IPL and CL ventures, and the umpteen T20 leagues spawned by these initiatives, constitute "tradition"? Likewise, does the monopoly exercised by the Indian cricket board over the game's finances and administration constitute "tradition"? You can't play the "tradition" card only when it suits you. So next time you hear Ian Healy and his Channel Nine mates poke fun at Afridi and the Pakistan cricket team or lament the good ol' days of umpires, throw them some history books, or better still, some old videos of their own spotless conduct on the field, including respect for umpires. As for the fans, well, they're a bit like New Zealand or an old flaccid penis (both shaped similarly anyway): everyone knows they're down there, but no one gives a damn!