To succeed as a ball tamperer a cricketer requires a magnificence of dexterity, inferior perhaps not even to the top echelon of neurosurgeons. Hacking away indiscriminately achieves little that’s positive.
Mastering this style of conjuring needs having a sleight of hand which would’ve impressed Houdini.
The ball-tampering Test cricketer is derided in the sport.
Hardly any player admits to illegally massaging a cricket ball, making it do things in defiance of what conventional physics dictates. Does that almost complete absence of admissions, mean that hardly a Test cricketer still partakes in such jiggery-pokery?
Or is the better question one of whether we’re all hypersensitive to such allegations and insinuations, to far greater a degree that any such contravention of cricket’s laws really matters? Pitch-doctoring in Test cricket is far more determinative to the match result, yet it continues to go on with impunity.
The current Test series between Australia and India already has contributed to the latest volume in cricket’s Encyclopaedia of Feuds About Cheating and Ball-Tampering. Which keeps things spicy.
Indian spinner Ravi Ravi Jadeja was fined for failing to notify umpires he was applying ointment to a sore finger during the first Test.Credit:Nine
Indeed the endless hysterics about ball-tampering in Test cricket could actually be kind of alright for cricket; and certainly not the opposite. Because a little malfeasance isn’t always wicked, if it contributes to the theatre and spectacle.
Arising from the carnage of the first Test in Nagpur, the Indian spinner Ravindra Jadeja accepted a sanction proposed by the International Cricket Council’s Elite Panel of Match Referees for having engaged in conduct which was contrary to the ever illusory or at least ill-defined “spirit” of cricket.
Specifically, Jadeja pleaded guilty to applying some sort of “soothing” balm to an inflammation on the index finger of his bowling hand, without first requesting permission to do so from the on-field umpires.
For this act, which represented Jadeja’s first offence of misconduct committed during the span of the previous 24 months, he was fined a quarter of his Test match fee, and allocated a single demerit point. The significance of the latter sanction being that similar to speeding fines, if a player racks up four such demerit points then the ICC’s code of conduct triggers a playing ban.
The scorecard from last week’s Test noted that Jadeja took seven wickets and also comfortably outscored 11 Australian batsmen, across each innings. All with a bung finger.
In observance of medical privacy, it’s appropriate that scant details are known as to the specific malaise from which Jadeja was suffering.
The persisting worry, naturally, is that Jadeja might need treatment during the remaining three Tests of the series, should his left index finger remain injured. However, if Jadeja’s need for treatment continues, he will obviously seek permission in order to be legally soothed.
It’s far-fetched, surely, to contend that Jadeja was proceeding in anything besides an orthodox manner in seeking to treat his principal spinning finger. There’s not a whiff of actual evidence, of course, that Jadeja’s application of the cream was actually some sort of ruse to apply any of that balm to the ball.
Ravi Jadeja took seven wickets and scored 70 with the bat in a man-of-the-match performance for India.Credit:AP
But suppose that Jadeja was loading up the ball with magic cream, then do the rules of cricket, governing and restricting the manipulation of the cricket ball, get just a little too much airtime anyway?
The Marylebone Cricket Club’s Laws of Cricket prohibit the shining of a cricket ball with anything other than sweat; a player can’t spit on a ball anymore, or breathe on it wrong. Nothing artificial can be applied, and presumably not even sweat excreted and then mixed around with sunscreen.
The problem, if anything, with the conduct of Jadeja is that it’s an inescapable probability tending to certainty, that he imparted some of his salve on the ball, while he was handling it with his injured finger. He, and others in the Indian team no doubt, shined the ball after it was handled with the offending digit.
Does any of that matter? Probably not, although the law prohibiting the application of balm to a cricket ball doesn’t require the proof of a player’s intent in order to maintain a breach.
The real problem with ball-tampering and suspicions of its practise is that as Australians we’re hypersensitive about such shenanigans. That’s been the case for ages, but it’s even worse since Steve Smith et al concocted a ham-fisted scheme of attacking a ball with a slice of 80-grit.
While mucking around with, picking away at the seams of, and even slathering a cricket ball in Deep Heat is a breach of cricket’s Laws, you’ve simply got to ask whether it’s all worth it.
In actuality, I’d venture to say that it’s not. The perception of the snidely and devious ball tamperer doesn’t line up with the effect of the tampering, whether it be Mike Atherton with the dirt in his pockets; Sachin Tendulkar being caught on camera scouring away (just at grass, of course…) caught in the seam; or Faf du Plessis applying spit mixed with the remnants of his mouthful of Junior Mints.
But like I said: the hysteria isn’t all that bad. A bit of spice is good. Actually, it makes for quite the sporting spectacle on the pitch. Sport needs a few villains.
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