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The Roar published a piece yesterday on the latest Mankad brouhaha, in which Jos Buttler was run out by Sachithra Senanayake while backing up too far.
That article states, “No one wants to hear that word. No one wants it to happen. No one enjoys watching it.”
I beg to differ. I love hearing that word. I want it to happen much more frequently. I enjoy watching it enormously.
In most areas, whether it be the most effective way to keep down a pull shot, where to buy Brylcreem, or good piano technique, I will take Don Bradman’s counsel ahead of Alastair Cook’s. The issue of Mankading is just one more.
An early sensation came in Australia’s innings when Brown was once more run out by Mankad, who, in the act of delivering the ball, held on to it and whipped the bails off with Brown well out of his crease. This had happened in the Indian match against Queensland, and immediately in some quarters Mankad’s sportsmanship was questioned. For the life of me I cannot understand why. The laws of cricket make it quite clear that the non-striker must keep within his ground until the ball has been delivered. If not, why is the provision there which enables the bowler to run him out? By backing up too far or too early the non-striker is very obviously gaining an unfair advantage… there was absolutely no feeling in the matter as far as we were concerned, for we considered it quite a legitimate part of the game.
– Don Bradman, “Farewell to Cricket”
My enjoyment, obviously, was enhanced in this case by the entertaining spectacle of Cook having a good old-fashioned pout, not to mention the buckets of tears falling from Michael Vaughan’s eyes, but even without these bonuses I’d have loved seeing this return of the much under-used Mankad.
Like Bradman, I am completely at a loss as to why running out a batsman who is trotting down the pitch before the ball is delivered is considered unsportsmanlike. In the Buttler case, Senanayake gave him two – two – warnings, in order to not be seen as contravening the spirit of the game.
Frankly I don’t see why a batsman should expect any warning at all.
Most cricketers, from a fairly early age, are made aware of the basic principles of cricket. One of these basic principles is the existence of the popping creases, and the fact that if you have ventured out between these creases while the ball is alive, there is a chance that you might be run out.
I don’t want to speculate on Buttler’s upbringing or experiences with junior coaching, but it seems almost certain that, having reached the international arena, he probably encountered this concept at some point.
Maybe he just forgot, but that’s cricket, isn’t it? I remember playing for Langwarrin eighths once when I completely forgot that hitting a ball on the full to a fielder meant he might catch it and you’d be out. I complained to the umpire that the fielder had failed to give me a warning before catching it, but the official was unmoved and I trudged unhappily off.
There are many activities on the cricket field that could easily be considered outside the spirit of the game. When Dennis Lillee kicked Javed Miandad, that was pretty outside-spirited. When Roy Gilchrist ran straight through his bowling action and hurled the ball straight at the batsmen’s head instead of bowling it, that was pretty poor form. When Kevin Pietersen got that stupid stripe in his hair, there was definitely grounds for official sanction.
But running a batsman out as he seeks to gain a headstart on a run? That’s not outside the spirit of the game, that is the very definition of the spirit of the game. In fact it’s the spirit of every game – that as a side seeks to gain an advantage within the rules, the other side will seek to deny that advantage.
Let’s be clear – a Mankad occurs when the ball is in play, when the game is alive, when no player has any excuse for not knowing what might happen.
Buttler wasn’t wandering out to do some gardening after the ball had been bowled, only to be run out by a sharp Sri Lankan WG Grace. He hadn’t gone for a walk to be treated by the physio. He wasn’t, like Dean Jones in the West Indies in 1991, walking off the field not realising he’d been bowled off a no-ball.
He was trying to steal a march on the fielding team by walking off before the ball was bowled.
And good for him. It’s canny work if you can get away with it. But just as a player who skips out to a spinner knows he might get stumped, just as a player who hits the ball knows he might get caught, and just as a player who agrees to play in a cricket game knows that stuff might happen he doesn’t like, when you try to get a headstart, you know you might get Mankaded.
You take the risk, you accept the result when it doesn’t go as you’d planned.
If bowlers are to be forbidden from Mankading on these stupid ‘spirit of the game’ grounds, then what, exactly, is to stop a batsman scampering happily halfway down the wicket before the ball is bowled? Batting teams could rack up centuries in byes just by letting the ball go.
Of course, if you changed the rule so that batsmen were actually forbidden to leave the crease before the ball was bowled, and the umpire simply signalled dead-ball every time they did, that would solve the Mankading problem immediately.
But there’s actually no problem that needs to be solved. The rules work fine, and the game is far preferable this way – allowing a batsman to take the chance if he wants that advantage, and allowing the bowler a remedy if he’s sharp-eyed enough to catch it.
It’s not unsportsmanlike, it’s the most sportsmanlike thing in the world – a fair and level competition between two opponents’ skill, wits and audacity. The Mankad is as much a part of cricket as the stumping or the caught-and-bowled. It’s beautiful.
So let me hear the word Mankad as much as possible. Let it ring throughout the nations. Let those bails be swept off as often as possible, and let batsmen everywhere be aware that there’s no such thing as a free centimetre.