Finding the behavioural balance

Daniel Laidlaw

The issue of on-field player conduct has been raised again recently with the suspension of Indian captain Sourav Ganguly and the comments made by former Sri Lankan batsman Roshan Mahanama in an interview published on rediff.com.

There are two main points to take from these events: Firstly, if sledging is occurring it should be treated with the same severity as dissent and secondly, to differentiate between sledging and "testing the mental ability of a batsman."

I refer to this paragraph from the Mahanama interview:

"I have always said the contest must stick to bat and ball. These people shouldn't test the mental ability of a player to rattle and disrupt and try to get him out. The Australians are good enough to beat any side in the world without testing the mental ability of their opponents."

Now, Mahanama was a specialist batsman, so suffice to say he is not looking at the game from a bowler's perspective. Nevertheless, it is still an absurd comment that contradicts the nature of the game.

Mahanama played an integral part in Sri Lanka's world record Test score of 952/6. He jointly holds the record for Test cricket's highest ever partnership so perhaps he enjoyed that domination of the bowling to such an extent that his judgement of the contest between batsman and bowler has been permanently clouded. Mahanama apparently fails to understand that the primary reason for the existence of bowlers is to get batsmen out. Moreover, they are required to do that with enough skill, planning and deception to put doubt in the batsman's mind. In other words, to test the mental ability of the batsman.

At the elite level, with players often possessing approximately the same level of talent, the difference between winning and losing can be made by who is stronger of mind and able to get the most out of his ability. To remove that element is to reduce the essence of the sport.

Does Mahanama think, for example, that after receiving a bouncer, the bowler is then required to bowl another bouncer because it is wrong to test the thinking, the mental ability, of the batsman by following it up with a yorker? Perhaps it is merely the view of someone who thinks the raison d'etre of bowlers is to serve the ball up for batsmen to hit.

Is cricket, and sport, only about strength, stamina and physical challenge?

It would be dreadfully dull if it were.

Spinners attempt to deceive batsman through flight, variation and degree of spin. Are they not testing the mental ability of the batsmen to correctly determine and adjust to what type of ball they are receiving?

In order to capture a wicket, fast bowlers are often required to make the ball move off the pitch in a way that makes batsmen question what type of shots they should play to particular deliveries. Forcing the batsman to question himself and the type of ball he is about to receive is at least half the battle. It is purely mental.

Similarly, captains require more mental ability than anyone else. They have to decide how to react tactically to the contest being played out before them. How much pressure they are able to withstand when the game is against them can determine their standing as a captain. If they weren't tested, we would never know.

The list of examples can go on ad nauseam. International cricket is almost entirely a test of mental ability. In fact, physical and mental ability are inextricably linked.

No team is good enough to succeed without testing the mental ability of their opponents. The contentious point is actually how they do it - whether it is with action or with words. To be fair to Mahanama, this is where he has a point. The problem is that he fails to differentiate between sledging - abusive language directed at an opponent - and the testing of mental ability. Surely you can test someone's mental ability without abusing him.

Real sledging obviously has no place in cricket. Anything less than that, though, just adds to the drama and enjoyment the contest, at least from a spectator's perspective. It is entertaining to watch an aggrieved bowler verbally challenge a batsman and to see the batsman respond by becoming even more determined. Clearly, many feel that this is still unacceptable, but it is undeniable that such contests produce enthralling theatre. The difficulty lies in establishing boundaries.

Cricket is an intensely confrontational game with a tradition of peaceful values, a contradiction that continues to vex observers and which our game's divergent cultures grapple with. We are continually trying to reconcile a war-like sport with gentlemanly ideals and cherished axioms like "it's not cricket". The intentions to preserve these values are honourable but not really relevant to today's sporting environment. However, whether you use those romantic guidelines or tough laws to preserve the spirit of the game, they're all equally meaningless unless breaches are fairly and uniformly punished.

I cannot recall a single sledging-related suspension, which means one of three things. Either no serious sledging occurs in international cricket, the umpires are not aware of it, or the umpires are aware of it but are neglecting to report it. The last possibility seems the most likely.

Umpires can get away with this because sledging is often far less graphic than dissent. But if behaviour standards are to be strictly enforced then they have to include all forms of on-field conduct and not just dissent. We cannot have Ganguly being suspended for a trivial incident while potential cases of racial abuse are ignored just because they are not public.

There is little doubt that current standards of behaviour often fall below what everyone considers acceptable. But as long as penalties for misconduct remain ambiguous and the judgement of match referees subjective there is minimal hope of this changing. Ganguly was suspended for allegedly disputing the umpire's decision; Ridley Jacobs similarly banned for not disputing it. The sooner players and public are told specifically how they can and cannot react, the better.

Surely the game can be played in the necessary spirit without ever losing the element of human conflict that makes it so compelling.

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