How many runs can a team score off four balls? Congratulations if you have come up with 24 as the answer, but it won’t get you some reward, not even brownie points, for that is the world of routine stuff, the mundane. The correct answer is 92 ... Ninety-two? Yes, 92! This is the kind of fun cricket has the potential to provide when umpires and players decide to go out of their way to stress their point. You might call it bizarre, but bizarre is fun, folks.
As reported recently, things got interesting during a 50-over-a-side Dhaka Second Division League match in the Bangladeshi capital where Lalmatia, a local team, conceded 92 runs in just four balls to deliberately lose a match as a sign of protest against biased umpiring. As the word goes, umpires had been biased against the team throughout the season because “at least one of its leading lights” was linked to political opponents of the sitting government. The match against Axiom Cricketers turned out to be nothing but the last straw.
Lalmatia was dismissed for just 88 off 14 overs before Axiom reached 92-0 off just four balls, with opening bowler Sujon Mahmud sending down wides and no-balls that all raced to the boundary, costing his side 80 runs without even a single legal delivery. Of the four legitimate deliveries, three boundaries came off the bat and that was that.
With the power to throw the disobedient out of the park, cricket umpires will soon be spoilers on the field where not too long ago they used to be characters in their own right and added to the fun
The report does not say how many LBW decisions featured in the match, but an intelligent guess would suggest there would have been more than a few for it is the easiest way for umpires to err or to be biased. This reminds one of Javed Akhtar, the Pakistani umpire who made quite a name for himself while being the neutral umpire (full-scale irony!) in a Test match between England and South Africa at Headingley. It was the last in the series and Akhtar erred so heavily in favour of England that even the hosts stood embarrassed. Of the 10 LBW decisions in the match, nine were against South Africa, and eight of those were handed down by Akhtar.
How bad it was reflected unambiguously in a comment David Gower made on air on the last day of the Test. As Akhtar raised his finger one more time when not many expected him to, Gower, who was commentating at the time, remarked spontaneously, “Umpire Javed Akhtar strikes again!”
The expression of protest in the recent Bangladeshi incident might have been a little over the top, but it did have an old-fashioned touch about it. The umpires, without assistance from hi-tech gadgets and gizmos, ruled the roost in the days past, but had to put up with player tantrums every now and then.
Today, even though technology overrules them often enough, umpires rule behind the protection provided to them by the ICC Code of Conduct. You raise an eyebrow at a decision and you risk being reported. One wonders what the likes of Dennis Lillee or Javed Miandad would have done under such stifling playing conditions. To many an umpire of today, even a routine Lillee appeal — always a spectacle in itself — would have been out of bounds!
The cricket folklore would lose much of its charm if you remove the tales of conflict that basically represented nothing beyond the passion with which the game was played. One can argue that passion and its expression are two different entities and a hard line on the latter is not necessarily a hindrance to the former. But such an argument does not take into account some essential dimensions of the competitive spirit of sports at large.
Things happen on the field and as far as they remain there, they add to the drama and not take much away from it. When it boils over away from the park, it is fair to deem them having gone beyond limits. The infamous incident involving umpire Idrees Beg might be relevant in this regard.
The visiting MCC ‘A’ team in 1955 was at the receiving end of a string of decisions that it believed went blatantly against them. Led by captain Donald Carr, a bunch of English players bundled the umpire in a tonga and took him to their hotel in Peshawar where he was manhandled and buckets of water were poured over him. When the incident threatened to snowball into something big, the players insisted on calling it a “harmless schoolboy prank.” Of course it was not a prank and it should have snowballed even into a diplomatic row, but it didn’t. The ICC Code should ensure that extreme incidents like the one in Peshawar or the one in 2006 at The Oval involving Darrel Hair don’t happen. But constantly trying to curb the expression of passion is not of much help.
In a recent tweak to the laws of the game — which will go into effect this October — the code will allow on-field officials to remove “a misbehaving competitor temporarily or permanently” and award five penalty runs to the opposition. If a captain refuses to remove his offending player, the umpire can award the match to the opposition. If both captains refuse to comply, the contest can be abandoned.
In the name of sanitisation, the game, arguably, is being deprived of a certain character that was once considered part and parcel of the game. It is taking the same path as did tennis where officialdom worked overtime to replace characters like John McEnroe, Jimmy Connors, Ilie Nastase and Boris Becker with stoic Ivan Lendl, efficient Stefan Edberg, clinical Pete Sampras and a pleasant Roger Federer. All of them were winners, but the first four were more than that.
They may have fewer titles than the last four, but they were characters who defined the character of the game itself. The game, any game, needs players more than it needs hospitality professionals or people from the diplomatic corps. The plastic smile is just not worth it.
Published in Dawn, EOS, April 23rd, 2017
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