All tremble when the Mankad shows its claws

Damn, Wednesday was funny. From around the world, the anguished cries of Englishmen surged and retreated like waves on the shore.

The Guardian‘s Mike Selvey was among them. So was the BBC’s Jonathan Agnew, and former Test player Graeme Swann, and leading smarm-exporter Michael Vaughan.

“I was pretty disappointed,” said England captain and eyeliner spokesman Alastair Cook. “In my opinion there’s a line and that line was crossed today.”

He’s right, a line was crossed. A white painted line, crossed by an English batsman who was then run out.

Such was the cause of all the perturbation: because it’s crazy, I know, but get this – he was run out at the non-striker’s end.

No, wait, that happens all the time. Ok, he was run out at the non-striker’s end before the ball had been bowled.

Somehow, whether a batsman is out of his ground before a delivery or after one defines the appropriateness of the dismissal.

As far as I can tell, the key is that this particular form of dismissal has a nickname. For no other discernible reason it is regarded as unsportsmanlike, and was described as such repeatedly on Wednesday despite no practical reasoning to support the thesis.

If you missed it, Sri Lankan spinner Sachithra Senanayake ran out Jos Buttler using the Mankad method. Twice he had warned England’s batting pair about straying out of the crease as he came in to bowl. When Buttler wandered on a third occasion, Senanayake knocked off the bails and curtly appealed to the umpire, more frustrated than celebratory.

Fair enough.

Except half the cricketing world, including most of the English contingent, went weird. The umpires leadingly asked captain Angelo Matthews if he’d like to withdraw the appeal. He rightly refused. England’s players sulked for the rest of the game. The commentary followed suit.

Selvey chipped in on Twitter. “I know Buttler was being dozy, had been warned, and it was in the laws and it was his fault. But is that really how we want the game played?” he asked, seeing no contradiction in using four good reasons why the bowler did the right thing as an argument that he didn’t.

Even The Roar got in on the act. “Mankad – the word no one wants to hear” ran the headline on our news piece.

Mate, words that no one wants to hear are ‘prolapse’ or ‘nuclear strike’ or ‘Michael Bolton album’. For one, Mankad is a cool-sounding word, with that heavy ‘k’ in the middle of two syllables solid as old-growth timber.

For another, it describes a cool move, where you snipe an opponent who’s trying to sneak an advantage. The chap who pioneered it had alertness and cunning and a hard edge: just the kind of guy I want on my team.

For a third, it always makes me think of a half man, half cat: a creature spry enough to demolish the stumps from in front of the bowling crease with a twist of its back and a twitch of its tail. Pretty cool.

“No one wants it to happen,” said The Roar piece. “No one enjoys watching it.” Bullcrackers. I ran it a dozen times on YouTube last night and ate a bag of chips. I love the Mankad. It’s exciting. It’s different. It’s unusual. Would any Australian be talking about a Sri Lankan one-day game in England without it?

But more to the point, it’s an entirely legitimate tactic to stop a batsman taking an unfair headstart. A batsman’s ground is there for a reason: he’s supposed to be in it. If he’s not, he’s liable to get out.

Sensible English voices like Lizzy Ammon and Mark Butcher recognised this immediately. Others went on tenuous adventures in logic, or the power of baseless but repeated assertion, to claim that the method was unsportsmanlike.

Yes, they all admitted, it is legal, and the rules support it, and are clearly stated, and everybody knows them, but… you know… Sri Lanka should have just… let the guy stay in, because if you say “spirit of the game” often enough then your argument will come true.

Tweeted Vaughan, semi-literately, “’Spirit of the Game’ should be replaced by ‘Best interests of the Game’… And last IMO wasn’t in the games best interest…. #justsaying”.

‘Just saying’, of course, is the weaselly, passive-aggressive escape clause for any unpleasant statement that someone wants to pretend is harmless; but then, any time you stop in for lunch at the Michael Vaughan Café, you find the only thing on the menu is a twat sandwich.

“Legally, it is a fair dismissal. Depends how you want to play your cricket…” trailed off Agnew, with even loftier passive aggression.

But what on earth makes a Mankad contrary to the nebulous spirit of the game?

When I have to explain cricket to Americans, one of the basic tenets is that the batsmen have to hit the ball sufficiently far that they can run to the other end. Considering how many run-outs are decided by inches, why is there any debate about giving someone a foot headstart?

And if the striker can’t start running until the ball has arrived, why should the non-striker? Of course, he’s free to go early as a tactic, but why shouldn’t that carry an attendant risk?

Buttler was his own victim. There’s no reason he should even have had warnings. If the striker takes guard outside his crease, he’s liable to get stumped. If he wanders out after knocking the ball to short leg, he’s liable to get run out. The only way he’d get a warning is if the fielder missed.

Poking someone in the eye is unsporting, because they can’t see. Running someone out after you shoulder-charge them is unsporting, because you’re mixing sports. Stabbing a stump through the umpire’s door is unsporting, because you’re ripping off Stanley Kubrick.

Running someone out when he’s left his ground is not unsporting, it’s bloody sensible.

Rarely do I offer international cricketers my personal technical advice, but in the dizzy echelons of pub cricket, I stand outside the crease with my bat grounded behind it and watch the bowler. When his arm comes over I start moving, switching focus to see where the ball ends up. It sounds so simple it’s almost as though Jos Buttler is an idiot.

With any luck, he’s sufficiently bright to decide he should now make a small tactical amendment to his game. Unhelpful, though, is the attitude of his captain.

Cook complained in the post-match interview, complained in the press conference, complained all night in his sleep, and probably complained into a spent toilet roll when he next took a seat for some solo time.

Rather than admit that his player got himself into trouble, Cook was relentless in claiming impropriety on the part of opponents who had to the contrary offered more than enough leniency.

He did so with the kind of sulky demeanour that would look poor from an Under-14s skipper, let alone a grown man who is considered competent enough to be paid by other people to do things. The captaincy sits increasingly poorly upon Alastair Cook.

The rules, friends, are simple. If you leave your ground while the ball is live, you can get run out. The ball is live as soon as the bowler starts his approach. If you wish to dice with that, do so at your risk.

And should you fall foul of that law, accept it like any other. Because it is like any other. No coherent objection to the Mankad has been given. An unthinking adherence to tradition is one of the most pernicious vices in the human canon.

If you want to claim the Mankad is unsportsmanlike, then like Buttler, you’ll need to get better at backing it up.