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I stopped believing in Father Christmas sometime in my younger years when, late on Christmas Eve and prior to depositing a bag of presents, my dad shone a torch into my room to check if I was asleep.
ENGLAND VS AUSTRALIA THIRD ODI SCORECARD
Childlike innocence was lost in a moment for the simple reason of a young boy being too excited to go to sleep.
I’d like to say my belief in the spirit of cricket disappeared on Saturday at Lord’s when Steve Smith decided he wasn’t going to recall Ben Stokes after he was adjudged to have obstructed the field.
A lifetime of blissful ignorance shattered by the devious behaviour of the bounder who is Smith, the antipodean dipping to a disgustingly low level to get one over the old enemy. Hang on a minute…
Well just as it should have been all too apparent that Santa Claus was no more than a parent helping himself to the glass of whisky left out, it is very obvious that the spirit of cricket is also a figment of people’s imagination.
In fact, given the overwhelming evidence, I’d go as far as saying your sanity would be questioned less by an admittance to the tune of thinking Father Christmas to be flesh and blood than it would by being a devotee of the spirit of cricket.
Time and again across the world incidents occur on a cricket field that inevitably result in cries of ‘it’s against the spirit of cricket’ from all and sundry.
Stuart Broad decides not to walk, Michael Clarke threatens grievous bodily harm, Shahid Afridi scuffs the pitch, James Anderson has a spat and so on and so on and so on. All against the spirit of the game apparently.
Yet what exactly is this mysterious spirit? The laws of the game as produced by the MCC, well the preamble to the laws, state in plenty of detail what is expected of the protagonists without actually pinning down precisely what it is.
Basically, it states that the captain of a side should make sure his charges behave themselves.
It’s more of an unwritten code that, let’s be honest now, isn’t worth the paper it’s written on, a crutch that provides the first port of call when things go against a side.
This leads in a roundabout sort of way to the events on Saturday. An argument could be formed both in favour of the decision reached and against the same thing.
As Michael Atherton succinctly summed up in The Times: “Quite where the ‘spirit of cricket’ comes into Ben Stokes’ dismissal is anybody’s guess.”
Stokes could well have been defending himself, either witting or unwittingly, but the ball hit the hand, he was well out of his ground and Smith, rather than being the devil some compared him to, was well within his rights to appeal. In fact, I can’t think of many captains I’ve played with and against who wouldn’t have done the same.
Why wouldn’t he? The theory of him being a bit naïve in the captaincy stakes doesn’t wash and is on the patronising side. Smith’s been around the block and knows the form and he knew exactly what he was doing.
He could have motioned for Stokes to come back to the crease but this is a competitive environment and for all that Eoin Morgan came out with in the aftermath – perched nice and comfortably on the moral high ground – a betting man would wager the Irishman would’ve done the same in Smith’s shoes.
When Broad was reprieved in the Trent Bridge Test a couple of years ago, it was noticeable that the Australian players didn’t condemn his actions knowing full well they would have done the same.
Too many doing the spectating have an idealistic yet indefinable thought of how sport should be played with their ire being directed towards individuals without any recourse to the whys and wherefores.
Laws of any sport exist for a reason and is it really being overly practical to suggest those in charge of a contest should be the ones to decide how it proceeds?
When charity is shown on so rare an occasion it shouldn’t be considered a given and maybe it’s for the good of all that pragmatism usurps romanticism as the default setting.
If any blame can be directed for the Stokes incident it lies with the third official. He had the power of veto and decided not to use it and that’s the end of that.
Against the spirit? What spirit?