It’s interesting to note that cricketers still have some steel in their bellies and hot blood in their veins.
Over the last decade or so, cricketing authorities have been so restrictive that cricketers had, in some sense, been neutered of their abilities to have any reactions at all, good or bad.
The recent spat featuring Tino Best, St Lucia Zouks fast bowler, who was born in Barbados, and Shoaib Malik, the Pakistani all-rounder playing for Barbados Tridents in Caribbean Premier League (CPL), was at least enjoyably energetic, reminding all that these are highly volatile, professional sportsmen.
Similarly, England’s fast bowler Jimmy Anderson and India’s all-rounder Ravindra Jadeja recently had an altercation at Trent Bridge during the teams’ first Test, a situation that both have had to answer for at very legal International Cricket Council (ICC) meetings.
Match referee David Boon, a very likeable bloke, must be pulling his hair out.
It was not too long ago that the ICC determined that bowlers must – not maybe, but must – actually turn heads back towards umpires while appealing for a catch or LBW. No longer was a bowler allowed to assume that the catch was taken and would be given.
Does that not smack of supplication, as if bowlers are actually begging for some sort of recognition of their efforts and successes? Are umpires not simply supposed to do their jobs and make decisions too?
If a batsman edges a delivery, why does a bowler have to turn his head and body towards the umpires, moves that could incur injuries, just to appeal? Do appeals without turns of heads not count?
If the ICC wants to help cricket, they can remove the dumb obstacles that they have placed on the umpires, thus making them, nowadays, nothing but ball counters, since that is all that they still do with impunity.
Why, for another example, can an umpire not call a bowler for chucking, if, indeed, the umpire thinks that situation is so? The rest will take care of itself. Sheer nonsense.
Almost every other decision made nowadays by on-field umpires must almost always be given and confirmed by what is called “the television umpire”.
Incidentally, where is the neutrality that the ICC suggests be present in adjudicating difficult decisions?
Anyway, when we played internationally, we may not have had technologies to ensure “more correct” decisions could be made, but very few umpires anywhere could, or would, suggest that international cricket teams were anything but respectful.
Indeed, England’s Harold “Dickie” Bird, one of the most revered international umpires ever, has always maintained that “at no time ever were those West Indies cricketers anything but honest, professional, hard-working cricketers and gentlemen. It has always been my privilege to be on the field with them”.
But, one must also remember that fracas between Pakistani umpire Shakur Rana and England captain Mike Gatting, a confrontation, in Faisalabad in 1986, that supposedly threatened the very diplomatic relationship between the two countries. What a massively big noise that was.
West Indies tour to New Zealand 1979/80 has gone down in history as being one of the most tumultuous cricket tours ever. To this day, some New Zealanders still revel in that “defeat” of the West Indies.
There was fast bowler Michael Holding kicking out a stump with the fantastic finesse and fluidity of a Cristiano Ronaldo free-kick, feet high, after a terrible “none” decision, wicketkeeper Deryck Murray taking the “none” catch in front of second slip.
New Zealand’s John Parker had to change his glove immediately, so torn had it instantaneously become after being destroyed by Holding’s pacy outswinger.
If that and at least one other incident from the tour had happened nowadays, the players involved would probably have been banned from playing for life. Or maybe they would have had to hire very competent lawyers.
But there have been very few “player vs player” confrontations. Normally, they are not present because most cricketers have that special respect for others who practise their own profession.
The couple that stand out involved some very vigorous, animated international cricketers.
While I was still playing, back in 1981, Australia’s premier fast bowler Dennis Lillee and Pakistan’s always non-phlegmatic, lively batsman Javed Miandad had a famous flare-up at Perth, Australia.
Photographs were frozen with Javed having bat raised like a small axe, set to strike, while Lillee bobbed and weaved like boxer Roberto Duran. Those reflective silhouettes are still so very funny to recall.
More recently, in 2003, West Indies batsman Ramnaresh Sarwan and another great Aussie pace-man, Glenn Mc Grath, exchanged opinions with accusation and counter accusations, nearly coming to blows.
The difference between these situations is that live television cameras caught the later happenings.
• Colin Croft is a former West Indies fast bowler. The Guyanese, now a professional pilot and commentator, has been writing articles and commentating on international cricket for the past two decades.
