The Gentleman's Sport
Fair play and playing cricket in the spirit it has always been played is slowly being eroded away.
The gentleman's sport is what cricket is widely known as and having grown up playing this sport you would often question if this was still how the sport is regarded. Most sports have changed from the early days mainly due to the sports turning professional and like anything that has money involved the seriousness changes the behavior of the players involved.
Yesterday during the Cricket World Cup involving Bangladesh and Sri Lanka we had another flare up which you would not have witnessed 30 years ago. I say that as that was when I was still playing and even though I was very competitive there were things you just would never do or even consider. A Sri Lankan batsmen was timed out having gone past the two minutes allocated giving the batsmen enough time to prepare to face their first ball.
Angelo Matthews was the batsmen in question and made it out to the middle with time to spare. Once at the batting crease he noticed the batting helmet strap was broken and asked for a replacement helmet. This would have been normal except the Bangladesh skipper inquired via an appeal and Matthews was technically timed out. Would you consider this gentlemanly behavior or unsporting even though Bangladesh were well within the rights to appeal.
In my opinion there is a line you don't cross and must always ask yourself would the other team behave and act in the same way? Because these instances are so rare the answer would be no and why it is unsporting behavior. This was not like this was a crunch game with serious implications as both teams have already been eliminated from the knockout rounds. One can imagine how desperate Bangladesh must be to drop to these levels and to think this is appropriate. As I said this was legal and no rules had been broken so Bangladesh were well within their rights.
When I was playing you had 60 seconds as a batsmen to cross the boundary line, but no one was looking at the clock. This was normally straight forward unless there was a batting collapse seeing multiple players scrambling for their gear, but this was never seen as a real rule that would have you timed out. Unfortunately if a player appeals the umpires have to stick to the laws regardless of what they think of whether it is right or not.
In the last few years we have seen some questionable behavior driven by an attitude to win at all costs. Great teams win matches on the field by the way they play and not by questionable methods. We have seen the Mankad rule come into play where a bowler can run out a batsmen who is out of his ground before bowling the ball. In the past bowlers would threaten a batsman backing up or stealing ground, but besides a few exceptions would not follow through with the threat.
Earlier this year we saw the Ashes series Australia vs England) bought into question with what some would call unsporting behavior. These decisions again were all legal, but could have been over ruled by the on field captain and weren't. Cricket is still the same game I loved and played except those playing it think very differently. I hate losing, but would only want to win because we deserved to win by being the better team.
If you start asking professional athletes to "be gentlemen" and not enforce certain rules, where do you draw the line?
The poms like to whinge about the Carey runout, but weren't too gentlemanly about the clear as day Starc catch in the same match:
It's not 1920 anymore.
It's modern, professional sport.
You have rules, the umpires adjudicate, you accept the decisions.
All sport has changed. You should be able to take the word of the fielder if he took the catch or not. Today Stoinis took a catch and genuinely wasn't sure and asked them to review. The Bairstow run out was legit however and is just a different way of thinking now.
There’s a bit of history between these 2 sides going back to a T20 in 2018 when Bangladesh threatened to walk off in the final over of a game they eventually won off the last ball. Pretty ugly scenes at the end of the match that resulted in a changing room being smashed up.
To be honest, Angelo Matthews always looks like he’s moving in slow motion but if your helmet is broken then surely you should be allowed to change it without being given out. For context, imagine if he’d faced a single ball. He could have spent an indefinite amount of time getting a new helmet or changing his gloves or having an unscheduled drinks break. Umpires do almost nothing to prevent the later which occur on a regular basis. I would imagine we’ll see a change to the laws to prevent it from happening again as this was clearly not the purpose of the timed out dismissal
He could have faced 1 ball and then spent 5 minutes changing his helmet which is absurd. The laws need to be clearer and not just updated for the world cup.
Look, we believe that it is the responsibility of all of us to follow the roll, but if a player is begging repeatedly that he has made a mistake, the Bangladeshi player should have said that. Would have given him a chance but he didn't do it at all which is very sad to see and a good sportsman never does that.
We have also seen in today's match that Rashid was misbehaving with Maxwell. After the match we got to see, I have never seen such a match in my life. Maxwell was in Rashid's dream all night.
To be honest I felt bad whatever happened with Mathews but his mistake was very childish and he was playing cricket for 15 years. Such kind of mistakes is unacceptable from Mathews.
After that out the behaviour from all players also unacceptable and after that I feel Bangladesh has done the right thing with Sri Lanka. The press conference was more childish and In 2014 when Sri Lank Mankad out to Butler, captain Mathews said it was within rules and so it's right. So I feel it's one kind of revenge.
Although both team already out of the tournament but they needed to fight to hold position super 8 otherwise they would be eliminated from 2025 champions trophy. So it was at do or die situation for Bangladesh and for the team win I think captain sakib has done the smart thing and the win of team should be the most priority. So it was not less competitive than top 4 ranking.
I think people should blame ICC rules which creates controversy. Such kind of rules still exist means a great number of people believe that it's right. Just think many rules changed why not this one. In fact the 3 minutes time reduced to 2 minutes.
I'm not too much interested in cricket but it's somehow interesting game . Mind refreshing