ODI RIP
Lasith Malinga, I read in one of the morning papers, practices his devastating late swinging yorkers by placing a pair of boots where the batsman’s feet would be, and trying to knock its toes off. Nice. Reminds me the silly season is about to begin later today, with another clutch of one dayers we’ll watch reflexively and forget as soon as they are over, if not sooner.
In the week or so that I was away, everyone and his uncle appears to have been busy writing the obituary of the one day game. Here for instance is Mike Henderson about a one day series no one gives a hoot in hell about.
As Kingsley Amis said, more will mean worse. After this interminable bunfight against the Australians, England go immediately to the Champions Trophy in South Africa, then return to the republic for a tour that kicks off with 11 one-day matches, over 20 and 50 overs, before the first Test starts in Centurion on Dec 16. Were England to reach the Champions Trophy final, a long shot admittedly, they will have played 25 one-day matches between Tests.
The problem, suggests Stephen Brenkley, is that in the 50 over version there is a prolonged period when the game is in a state of stasis.
It is the manner in which the players approach the game. Between roughly the 20th over and the 40th in most innings of one-day internationals the game is put in a kind of suspended animation in which the bowlers bowl and the batsmen bat, but only way, as if by unspoken agreement.
Defensive fields are set, runs are nurdled and squeezed rather than struck, it is risk-free on both sides. Anything beyond is a bonus. Things start to happen again in the 40th over. It was like that at Lord’s again yesterday. Australia, having reach 75 for three off 20 overs, were 169 for six from 40 and then added 80 in the final 10. Perfectly innocent Sunday afternoon slumbers were disturbed all round the ground.
It is formulaic cricket, which the introduction of power plays has not fully addressed, and its torpid effect has been aggravated by the advent of Twenty20 which is not perpetually exciting but is short. And at least in 20-over cricket, somebody is always trying something.
Sachin Tendulkar suggested that a solution to this and other ills is to split the ODI game into two innings per side — a formula they are now calling the Sachin Plan, though various luminaries have been arguing this case for years now. [Most recently, Dean Jones suggested a marriage of the T-20 and Test forms].
A solution that does not address the problem is IMHO no solution at all — merely a case of activity without direction. If you accept the argument that the problem with ODIs is the lull in the middle, what then causes that lull? The fact that teams have to preserve wickets for a late order blitz, yes? If that is the case, how does splitting the boredom into two halves change anything? Teams still have 50 overs to play, and need to keep wickets intact for the end, and so will ease off after the field restrictions are removed. All this Plan, whose birth certificate now boasts Tendulkar’s name as ‘father’, will do is create an artificial jerk in the progress of an innings.
Err, how would it be, since Tests too have begun failing to draw crowds, if we split the Tests up too? The first five batsmen play, then the first innings is adjourned, the second team has its five batsmen play… no? Or how about the side batting first plays 50 overs, then the second team gets a shot at bat, then the first team comes back… again, no? Too ridiculous? How then is it sensible to implement such a system in the ODI format?
Dean Jones had an alternate suggestion — reducing the number of overs, hence shortening the mid innings stalemate, by 10. In other words, are you bored because there is a period of two hours in mid innings where nothing much happens? Pity — so tell me, would you be hugely enthused if the boredom quotient was reduced to an hour and a half?
No? Thought so.
Derek Pringle has five solutions, not one.
1 Allow bowlers a maximum of 12 overs each rather than the current limitation of 10. That way fewer bowlers are needed to provide the bulk of the overs, a move that would simultaneously allow more batsmen to be picked to face them.
2 Remove the playing condition that restricts bowlers to having a maximum of five fielders on the leg-side. Packing that side of the wicket can restrict the scoring, but it would open up the off-side field allowing bold batsmen to score boundaries that are such rarities in the middle overs these days.
3 Only allow both the fielding side and the batting side to take their Powerplays after the 20th over. That way, you will have 10 overs of the “boring” middle period where play should not be predictable.
4 The use of a new ball at either end as used in the 1992 World Cup. Might be tough on batsmen on early season pitches in England but it precludes the need to change the ball while making it easier for both spectators and TV to pick it up.
5 Ensure every team carries a home and away kit so there are no colour clashes of the kind that marred this year’s final of the Friends Provident Trophy where both Sussex, Hampshire and the umpires all wore the same shade of dark blue.
I’m kind of amused by item 3: All it means is that teams will look to preserve wickets, that is, to bat sedately, in the first 20 overs so they have their wickets for when the powerplays kick in after twenty overs — the choice being offered, then, is do I want to be bored pallid at the beginning of the innings or at the end?
What characterizes much of recent commentary on the subject is a pervading sense of panic: No one is coming to watch ODIs any more; something must be done [Why? Because what would happen to the ICC's cash cow, the World Cup, otherwise?]; this is ’something’; therefore let’s do this.
The most relevant comment/solution came from Sambit Bal, the other day.
Meaning. Context. Provide those, and interest will kick in. Speaking of — give me one good reason to care a damn for a triangular one day series beginning in Sri Lanka today? Even the journalists covering it are so bored, they are reduced to suggesting that this — a tournament being played out on low, slow pitches — is the perfect opportunity for these three teams to get their act together ahead of the Champions’ Trophy, which of course is going to be played in conditions that are the exact antithesis.
Update: In the first game of the tri-series, Sri Lanka has opted for first strike. And as the camera pans across the ground, what you see are large swathes of empty stands. Would the seats had been filled if this game was to be played over two innings per side of 25 overs each, do you think?
Battle of the duds
I never thought to use the descriptor ‘dud’ for the Australian cricket team — but day one of the final Ashes test deserves no less.
At close, Australia look good to spare my blushes and nail the 2-1 result I’ve been talking about — but that’s thanks largely to England’s profligacy. The bowling was uninspired, the captaincy by the numbers — the only thing Australia really had going for them is an England batting lineup concentrating not on the next ball but the ticker tape parade at the end of it all.
The day in one word? Boring.
Simon Barnes thinks the problem is that the home side, especially its middle order, was too deferential.
Everybody has been trying to pinpoint what has been amiss with the England middle order in this series. I have the answer: it is that the England middle order is too Wimbledon, too Victoria, too Waterloo. It’s been ever so slightly apologetic. The problem with Nos 3, 4 and 5 is diffidence.
In fact, the trouble with the England cricket team has almost always been diffidence, at least when they play Australia. Every now and then, diffidence is set aside, but in the three centuries in which the two nations have played each other at cricket, more often than not, when Australia have bumped into England, England have said sorry.
Yeah, well. Presumably the England middle order rang in some body doubles of Australian parentage in the first three Tests, and most especially at Lord’s.
I’d suspect a far bigger problem has been distraction, a shifting of focus from the main event to the sideshow. The undercurrent throughout the fourth Test was, oh if only Freddie was here and he was fit. The only topic of discussion between the end of the fourth Test and the start of the series decider was, will Freddie win it for us?
Interestingly, much of the commentary after day one revolves around Australia’s critical blunder in leaving out Nathan Hauritz, and how Swann is likely to be the difference between the two sides. Fair enough — if England had the nous to take advantage of an unusually generous Australian bowling lineup and pile on the runs, as the lunch time score of 108/1 in 26 overs suggested they would. Trouble is, they then threw away 7 for 199 in two sessions — absent a daunting score on the board, Australia’s coming-into-form batting lineup is a good bet to take it away in the first innings, forcing a seriously under-confident England to play catch up, and negating any advantage a wearing pitch might afford.
Punters have apparently staked close to $70 million on the series result.
On Wednesday afternoon, the odds on Australia winning at The Oval on the Indian market were 2.40, England winning it 4 to 1 and a draw at 1.25. Betfair (on Thursday, hours before the start), offered odds of an Australian win at 2.42, England 5.2 and a draw 2.5.
I’ll stay with my 2-1 prediction — and hope the next four days provide something resembling a real cricket match. Day 1 didn’t.
Ashes to ashes
One day you’re a hero, the next you’re a bum, so what the hell.
Babe Ruth wasn’t the first sportsman to experience the vertiginous nature of sport, and he won’t be the last — but there has rarely been as precipitous a descent from the heights as the one being experienced just now by Andrew Strauss and his men.
A month ago, England roared; its team, the media held, was ready to challenge for supremacy in the Test world. From that to ‘ill-tempered rabble’ is some fall.
They were a rabble, an ill-tempered bunch of no-hopers and the decline was so steep, so unbroken in every phase of the match that mattered, it was impossible not to conclude that it will take a lot more than a miraculous flight to Lourdes by Flintoff and Pietersen to restore the damage – and any competitive balance to an Ashes series which some of the more romantically inclined believed was within England’s grasp on Friday morning.
What came to pass was rather more than a defeat. It was an investigation conducted by Ricky Ponting and his team into what many believe is the ruling culture of so many areas of English sport.
Culture is a fancy word, though, for a deficiency which has always been fatal in the upper echelons. The killer weakness is an inability to build victory upon victory and take each success as a stepping stone to a more permanent condition of strength rather than see it as some reason for premature and spurious self-congratulation. The former course is the Australian way. That’s how they managed to arrive here as a once great force roundly declared to be on the skids – and then leave so far ahead of their opponents, psychologically and in performance, that it is almost impossible to imagine any meaningful retaliation by England at The Oval next week.
Yesterday morning it was illuminating to walk through the corridor where the Australians waited to take the field. Their exhilaration at the prospect of victory, their sense of pride that they had been to the hardest place most of the team had experienced and emerged as the masters of every situation was so tangible you could cut it.
Ponting was clean-shaven and his eyes glowed more fiercely than any competitor you could remember since the best of the great fighter Roberto Duran.
England by contrast were plainly entombed in the knowledge that they had not even managed the odd hint of meaningful defiance.
The shambolic nature of England’s play in the fourth Test is also the theme of Paul Hayward’s column.
In 48 turbulent hours, England have lurched from being one-nil up with two Tests to go to a team who dare aspire no higher than victory-by-massive-underdog. There have been phases in this Test when they have surrendered all credibility as a fighting force. They have been a team of recidivists – mentally soft compared to the relentless self-improvers Ricky Ponting has inspired to shed their no-name image.
When Australia finish England off, two outcomes will keep the urn in Ponting’s mitt. A draw or an Australian victory at The Oval will preserve the status quo. England would go to Surrey’s home with a much stiffer task than in 2005, when they needed only to share the match to release a tsunami of celebratory fizz.
Retain or regain: which would you bet on? To believe England will need to book Trafalgar Square again (please, no) you would have to dismiss the first six sessions in Leeds as an aberration, a cosmic bad-hair experience, prompted by the loss of Andrew Flintoff and a hotel fire alarm. More to the point, England will have needed to bed down last night believing they are still capable of conquering a side that bowled them out for 102 and then struck 445 before scything down the best English batsmen again, this time for 78 runs.
There is a lot of forgetting and ignoring to be done. And learning. England’s bowlers stuck their hand in the fire for two days running, thus demonstrating a curious inability to learn from pain. The evacuation alarm klaxon that sent them on to the street outside their hotel at 4.30am on Friday was still ringing in their souls by the time they saw that Headingley demands precision and tightly marshalled aggression rather than the short-ball machismo that furnished Australia with so many runs.
That last bit strikes a chord. Watching the early passages of the Australian first innings, I was struck by the way a good tactic turned into an albatross so quickly. In the initial overs, the England bowlers seemed to use the short ball brilliantly to have the Aussies in considerable strife — but by the 6th or 7th over of the innings, the short ball was becoming so predictable, Ponting was waiting on the back foot before Harmison and his mates had even hit their delivery stride.
Mike Atherton says all is not lost: England needs to drop Bell, Bopara and Collingwood and pick Faith, Hope and Freddie — never mind that the last named is being held together by band aids and hope, and the names of the other two don’t show up in the county scoreboards. Scyld Berry adds a fourth name to the list — that of a player who hasn’t turned out for a Test in what, five years? More?
David Gower’s piece meanwhile appears to underline the essential problem England is facing: the best chance to win the Ashes is a result-oriented pitch for the fifth Test, but the problem with that is that England’s fast bowlers have already shown an ability to collectively lose the plot, while the Australian attack is increasingly finding its feet as its bowlers begin to hunt in pairs and Mitchell Johnson appears to return to a measure of form [and then there's always a fit and ready Brett Lee].
Amidst all the gloom and doom, Martin Johnson predictably has some fun, noting among other things the presence of a light aircraft trailing a ‘Get Well Soon Freddie’ banner in its wake.
Since 2005, England have won more matches without Flintoff than they have with him, which only goes to prove the Mark Twain theory about statistics being closely related to damned lies. Flintoff didn’t take a single wicket at Edgbaston, but he visibly lifted the others with his energy and presence. Here, on the other hand, England’s combined electricity would barely have illuminated a 40-watt bulb.
Which is why, if Flintoff is fit for the final Test, the minimum requirement for the announcement would be the ringing of church bells, a public holiday and a papal puff of white smoke. We can’t be 100% certain just how badly Flintoff’s late withdrawal affected England mentally, but rarely can Headingley have witnessed any team playing with their heads so far up their backsides since the arrest of a pantomime horse here several years ago.
Collectively, the commentary sums up England’s plight quite nicely: the team is deteriorating “in all apartments”, as Justin Langer would did say, and the only antidote anyone can think of is the hope that a Flintoff in some questionable state of fitness will appear on the field, complete with magic wand. Against that, Australia has systematically set right the problems that plagued it in the first and second Tests: Shane Watson in the makeshift slot of opener has nailed his third successive fifty; Michael Clarke and Marcus North are competing to score 100s; Ricky Ponting’s batting form is looking increasingly better; Siddle has been aggressive and Hilfenhaus methodical and both have learnt to bowl as a pair; Mitch Johnson is getting back into a groove of sorts and Stuart Clark provides an additional game breaking option…
I’m getting to where I wish I’d put some decent money on the 2-1 Oz win I’ve been talking up since this thing began — could have made up for some of my losses in the more unpredictable stock market.
In passing, and at a tangent, is Shane Warne gently accusing Langer of plagiarism, here?
Window of opportunity
Dileep Premachandran makes the case for the coronation of the Proteas as toppers of the world Test table, in the wake of the Ashes.
Cricket, like English football, has had two all-powerful dynasties dominating much of the past three decades. West Indies’ hegemony mirrored Liverpool’s time at the top of the tree and the Australia era has gone hand-in-hand with Manchester United’s dominance. Now, with the exit of Shane Warne, Glenn McGrath, Adam Gilchrist and Matthew Hayden over a period of two years, Australia have come back down to terra firma.
Of the pretenders, who is best equipped for a long stay? Or will the future mirror the mind-numbing mediocrity of the heavyweight boxing ring? Where once you had Ali and Frazier, you now have Klitschko and Chagaev. Cricket can ill afford such a dizzying fall from grace, especially in an era when Test cricket is struggling for survival. Competition is a wonderful thing, but it’s a dominant champion that gives a sport a real edge and other teams something to aspire to. To echo the words of Sir Alex Ferguson, you need someone to knock “right off their fucking perch”. …
What of India? They followed up home victories against England and Australia with a sloppy display in New Zealand – winning one, being outplayed in the next and then spurning the chance of victory in the third game. They were the only side to go toe-to-toe with Australia during the glory years, and have also worked out what it takes to win away from home. But there are cracks in the edifice, with impending retirements and complacency casting a pall over the future.
The virtue of mediocrity
Writing in the Age, Greg Baum nails it: The current edition of the Ashes is compelling not in the way the 2005 version was, as a contest between two equals, but because it is proving to be a contest between two equally inept outfits.
Neither team, absent a lot of help from the elements, can bowl the other out; neither team, absent tons of luck, can dominate the other with the bat. Baum’s premise:
In 2005, England rose to the occasion to shock a still great Australian team, and so momentarily establish itself as great. The teams were evenly matched, the weather was mostly fine and the standard of cricket was consistently high and sometimes sublime. The sense was that if Australia gathered itself up, it would win. The surprise was that England did not let it.
In 2009, Australia is not the team it was, heroics in South Africa notwithstanding, and England is not the team it could be. In the absence of Shane Warne, Glenn McGrath, Adam Gilchrist, Matthew Hayden and Justin Langer, it is hardly heretical to say so of Australia, and it is undeniable about England.
It means they’re as bad as each other, which means they’re as good as each other, which means it is impossible to know yet how it all might end. In 2005, the outcome was unpredicted, in 2009 unpredictable. Even the standard of umpiring has declined, though Damien Martyn might demur.
The spirit is willing…
…but the cricketer is weak.
Much ink in the media today about the ’spirit of cricket’, following on from the fuss yesterday about England’s stalling tactics as the fifth day’s play in the first Ashes Test wound down, and Strauss and his men fought to seize on every possible trick in the book to save the game. Here’s James Lawton:
Certainly, it was in keeping with something that two years ago seemed to represent arguably the most inept piece of gamesmanship ever to be inflicted on a game whose very name is supposed to be tantamount to saying fair play. Remember that misadventure at Trent Bridge, when England threw jelly babies down on the wicket and so inflamed the Indian bowler Zaheer Khan he promptly produced one of the greatest bursts of swing bowling ever seen?
We know that gamesmanship, to give it the most benign description, has been rife in cricket since well before the England captain Douglas Jardine decided that the only way to beat Australia was to make a target of Don Bradman’s body. The consequence of that was a possible break-up of the British Empire. No doubt the repercussions are less grave after the incidents at Sophia Gardens but England need to look at one of them very carefully.
It is that they snatched from the extraordinary salvage work of Paul Collingwood, Anderson and Monty Panesar the precise opposite of the feel-good factor. It was the feel petty-and-inadequate factor. It was an admission they were in desperate need of help by any means they could muster. Anderson, who had been in heroic mode for some time, understandably seemed almost as offended as Ponting.
Malcolm Conn is equally spirited on the subject of cricket’s spirit.
Andrew Strauss is either a weak leader or has no idea of the spirit of cricket.
Either way, the decision to send an acting 12th man and physiotherapist on to the field to deliberately waste time in the dying minutes of the tensely drawn first Test is disgraceful.
It is clearly against the spirit of cricket and borders on cheating.
The International Cricket Council’s code of conduct specifically outlaws time-wasting.
Match referee Jeff Crowe is unable to uphold the integrity of the game because onfield umpires Aleem Dar and Billy Doctrove failed to make a report.
This simply condones a practice that has blighted cricket too often in the past and must be stamped out.
Um. Going off at a tangent for the moment, I invariably fail when I try to unravel the tangled skein of ICC red tape. Why, for instance, is it necessary for the on-field umpires to report something before the match referee can consider it? He sits in that air conditioned booth all day, watching the action — why is it not possible for him, the man installed as on-site guardian of the ICC’s code, to take suo moto notice of something that merits attention and redress?
Reactions range from the ad hominem to the amusingly pragmatic. Duncan Fletcher is a prime example of the former category, with his ‘who is Ricky to talk?’ argument.
My feeling about the spirit of the game is that the players have gone too far if what they are doing sets a bad example to schoolboys watching at home. But can the Australians really argue that England’s tactics are worse than the way Ponting places pressure on the umpires and makes them look bad in front of a huge crowd and TV audience? And we haven’t even mentioned Australia’s sledging.
The way he objected after Aleem Dar rightly turned down a catch at silly point off Paul Collingwood was typical. Back in 2005 Ponting and his team were over-aggressive towards the umpires on a regular basis, and he was at it again here. Ponting has to be careful. Someone needs to sit down and ask him what he understands by the spirit of the game. The way he plays is definitely not in the spirit. And if the Australians would have you think that they’d have done things differently on Sunday evening, then pigs might soon be spotted in the skies above St John’s Wood.
Nasser Hussain — who else — heads the pragmatic brigade. Do it, advises the man who built an entire series around the concept of having Ashley Giles bowl a mile outside leg stump to a packed leg side field — only, don’t get caught.
When the 12th man and physio came on at the same time, they went too far. It wasn’t a streetwise move at all, it was village-green stuff. It was amateur and embarrassing to watch. And it was bad for the game – more like diving to win a penalty than delaying a throw-in.
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Let’s get one thing clear: Jimmy Anderson and Monty Panesar were heroes for the way they held out for 40 minutes at the end to stop Australia taking a 1-0 series lead. It was fantastic to watch them bat with such composure and courage like that, but they just needed to show a touch more nous, to run down the clock in more subtle ways.
When Ponting brought on part-time off-spinner Marcus North, it was up to the batsmen to realise that he was just desperately trying to get through as many overs as possible. That meant their job was to stall in any way they could.
There are so many ways to do that – they could do some ‘gardening’ between each delivery, or take guard at the beginning of each over, with plenty of adjustments. They could pull away during the bowler’s run-up, claiming someone had walked across the sightscreen, or chat for longer between overs. Ponting could chirp for all he was worth, but there’s nothing he could really do about it.
Management of the situation shouldn’t have to come from the dressing room but too often it does with this England team. It was the same with Monty’s field placings when he was bowling – Simon Katich kept tucking him off his legs and he didn’t think to put in a leg gully. Next day, suddenly he had a leg gully because the coaches must have suggested it to him. That shouldn’t have to happen, these guys should think on their feet more. In the end, the intervention on Sunday evening came from the dressing room, but they should have been smarter and more subtle, too. There was no need for them to send out the 12th man and the physio, as if to make out that Jimmy needed new gloves and he was injured.
On more practical lines, Suresh Menon suggests that the problem may admit of a simple solution: stop the clock.
In later years, time-wasting especially in the last session of a close match was sought to be brought under control with the introduction of the mandatory overs. Twenty six-ball overs had to be bowled no matter what. But what if the fielding team was rushing through their overs and looked like they might get in a couple more?
This is what happened at Cardiff, with England’s last pair at the crease. Time had to be wasted. And in the time-honored tradition, out came the 12th man with the gloves, the physio with his tubes and sprays, and since it was the home team that was benefiting there were few boos and catcalls from the crowd. In a Test in Australia recently, the Indian number eleven walked out to bat with two left gloves in an attempt to waste time. It was so puerile, spectators didn’t know whether to laugh or boo.
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Next to ‘walking’ (or not), time-wasting is one of the game’s unlegislated events. Non-walkers say that in the long run, the decisions even out. But contexts change. Time-wasting is usually a team effort, with the fielding captain under pressure consulting his bowler, complaining to the umpire about the shape of the ball, rearranging the field and indulging in a series of actions that have an obvious intent. Umpires often react with a “C’mon, get on with it,” but little more. Batsmen asking for gloves and sprays seldom get even that suggestion thrown at them.
In other sports – soccer or basketball, for instance – the clock is stopped when there is a break in play. Time is added on at the end of the game so no team suffers from its opponent’s time-wasting tactics. In soccer, players who pretend to be injured or fake falls in the opponents’ box are given yellow or red cards for bringing the game into disrepute. Cricket likes to maintain its ethos, and it is unlikely that a batsman who plays on after knowing he is out will be penalized in any way.
But time-wasting is another matter. Perhaps the clock should be stopped while muscles are attended to or gloves are exchanged.
Go back for a moment to the original argument, though — about whether England’s stalling contravened that undefined something called the spirit of cricket — a notional entity often invoked and often ignored, often by the very same people.
Just what kind of animal is this, asks Michael Jeh — and his piece, more than any of the other commentary I’ve read today, resonates with me.
The only way for a noble but essentially irrelevant concept like this to meaningfully find its way back into cricket is for the ICC to take a firm position on what it stands for. Otherwise, it will simply become a toy gun conveniently toted by captains when it suits them. The moral high ground will merely become another cynical platform that floats on very thin ice.
For instance, what is the position on issues like walking or claiming dubious catches? Do we just leave all decisions to the umpire and accept them gracefully? Is it that “grace” that defines the spirit of cricket? Or does it go beyond a mere passive acceptance of a decision to actually walking when you know you’ve nicked it or not appealing for a catch that is clearly not out?
When it comes to the matter of sledging, is there an invisible line in the sand that all cricketers respect? Is race, religion or ethnicity placed on a higher moral plane than someone’s marriage or their sister’s alleged promiscuity or any other special category of insult designed to put them off their game? Who decides and who arbitrates? Are there special allowances to be made for cultural sensitivities and personal circumstances? Clearly, it is almost impossible to come up with a sensible line in the sand that all cricketers agree on. What’s deeply hurtful to one cricketer will be a laughing matter for another. What’s more, what might be a joke today might be a mortal wound tomorrow, even to the very same individual. So where does the spirit of cricket sit in relation to sledging or mental disintegration or any other fancy term that is used to legitimise verbal intimidation? Why is it just so-called ‘time-wasting’ that has got Ponting so worked up?
Who is judge and jury? Clearly the ICC has yet to come up with a system that is consistent and reliable. Gautam Gambhir gets suspended for making physical contact with Shane Watson by the English match referee, Chris Broad. Yet, when his own son, Stuart Broad, makes physical contact with Peter Siddle at a tense moment of a gripping Test match, the match referee sees no problem with that. That sort of inconsistency merely tempts players to test the boundaries. Ask the players and they’ll tell you it was all in the heat of the moment and they’re all big boys who can handle matters between themselves. Why was the Gambhir case not handled like that too then?
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