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We tend to think that the ugly fighting on and off the cricket field are signs of deterioration of sportsmanship in this millennium.
Think clashes involving David Warner and Quinton de Kock this month in the Durban Test, followed by the fistful farewells given by South Africa’s matchwinning quickie Kasigo Rabada in the next Test in Port Elizabeth and then Friday’s on-field fury and fisticuffs between Sri Lankan and Bangladesh cricketers at Colombo in the Nidahas T20 tri-series.
Wrong! What’s new about players losing their cool on or near the pitch in cricket?
Nothing can compare with the on-field brawl between two all-time greats – Australia’s legendary fast bowler Dennis Lillee and Pakistan’s iconic stroke-player Javed Miandad – in the November 1981 Perth Test. They got physical.
The great Lillee was fined and suspended for two one-day internationals after aiming a kick at the Pakistan captain Javed Miandad on the fourth day of that notorious Test.
According to Lillee, the Pakistani had used swear words at him.
Observed Ken Piesse in Cricket’s Greatest Scandals (2001), Miandad menacingly brandished his bat in retaliation.
Not to be outdone, Lillee clenched his fists and shaped up like an old-time bare-knuckle boxer as the commentators and spectators held their breath.
From slip skipper Greg Chappell yelled “Dennis!” and rushed down the pitch to intervene. Umpire Tony Crafter had to separate combatants Miandad and Lillee.
Miandad later explained, “I lifted my bat to ward him off and to tell him that if he hit me, I’d hit him for saying dirty words to me”.
Somehow it seemed unfair that although Lillee received the punishment he deserved, the equally guilty Miandad walked free.
Lillee wrote in his 1984 book Over and Out! that this was the only on-field controversy he truly regretted.
“Javed jabbed me in the rib cage with his bat, but nobody wanted to know about it. I’m not saying I was right in what I did, even though I gave him only a slight tap on the field. I’m sorry thousands of kids saw it, but I’m also sorry the incident wasn’t fully shown in television replays.”
We tend to think that gambling, illegal betting, bribery, match-fixing, spot-fixing and other corruptions are modern phenomena. Far from it! They have been with us for two centuries and are as old as cricket itself.
Among the first people to be kicked out of cricket for match-fixing was William Lambert in June 1817. That was 201 years ago and about 180 years before Salim Malik, Hansie Cronje, Mohammad Azharuddin, Salman Butt, Mohammad Asif and Mohammad Aamer put cricketing vices on front pages of newspapers in the 1990s and early 2000s.
Dave Liverman, a professor of history at Yale University, wrote in Cricinfo, “A great cricketer in the early days of the organised game, William Lambert was a fine exponent of the forward style of batting and was regarded at one time as the best batsman in England.”
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Lambert was the first batsman in cricket history to score centuries in both innings of a match, for Sussex at Epsom in 1817, a feat not repeated for 76 years. A few months later he was banned from playing any matches at Lord’s for not trying his best in a match for England against Nottinghamshire. Perhaps it was an early form of match-fixing.
An efficient bowler and an agile fielder, he made his living from cricket, playing for the highest bidder, mostly in single and double-wicket matches.
In the 1820s the cricket authorities drove the bookies out of Lord’s, and matches thrown for large amounts of money became only an unpleasant memory.
However, betting continued on small scale and posed no threat to the integrity of the game, according to David Underdown in Cricinfo.
As I had written in my 2012 book Cricket Conflicts and Controversies, “True, the more things change, the more they remain the same”.