Dumb-ass cricket
Dumb-ass cricket from Ian Bell (unless Asad Rauf called over which I find unlikely), which hopefully won't take away from a superb innings because he really did bat fantastically well until that brain freeze.
31 July 2011
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15 comments:
Quite agree with you. The first principle of cricket is that if there is a possibility that the ball is live assume that it is!
Pleased to see that the umpires got is absolutely right and Dhoni acted in the Spirit of Cricket, probably with a lot of sense spoken by Dravid.
What I do not really understand is that there seemed little or no dialogue on the pitch at the time. A call from somebody early would have helped "The ball is not dead" or something like that would have helped. As umpires we are encouraged to keep players informed and this extends to when the ball is alive if there is doubt.
I would like to think that England would have done something similar but I doubt it.
Incidentally I wrote that Burble when it was tea and I assumed Bell was out!
Since when has the spirit of cricket been about rewarding naivety and stupidity. I think Flower and Strauss were completely out of order going to the Indian dressing room and requesting they reconsider their appeal. The Indian team did nothing wrong whatsoever and Bell only had himself to blame for getting himself run out. Perhaps the next time I have a swing at one on middle stump resulting in the stumps going flying, I should invoke the spirit of cricket to try and get a reprieve?!
You're not the first to have taken that view Jez. I don't agree with it though. Bell was stupid, but it was a genuine misunderstanding and the fielding side did nothing skillful to gain the wicket. I'd like to think that all captains in that situation would not appeal, and would retract it if they made the appeal in the first place.
I don't see what's unsporting about Strauss asking Dhoni if he really wanted to uphold the appeal as long as it was done in an even-tempered way.
I agree that Bell was stupid and should not have left his ground until a boundary had been signalled or over called. However, he was definitely misled by the actions of the fielding side. Kumar took his time picking up the ball and lobbed it in to Dhoni as if it was a boundary. Dhoni's actions also indicated it was a boundary. He did not go behind the stumps and appeared to be walking to the pavillion. Several other Indian players were also behaving as if it was tea. Taking off the bails was done as an afterthought in a very casual manner and the appeal was no more than a polite request. I think that Dhoni did the right thing and with all the mitigating circumstances it would have left a very nasty taste in the mouth if Bell had not returned after tea. I was surprised at the hard line taken by many of the Sky commentators. They seemed to ignore the actions of the fielding side and that Law 42(1) is just as much part of the Laws of the Game as Law 38.
Whilst Bell was in the wrong, by law, the whole situation could have been avoided if Dhoni hadn't appealed in the first place. It was clear that Bell had no intention of running a fourth, in fact, he was under the assumption, as were a few of the Indian fielders (Suresh Raina at slip being one), that Praveen Kumar hadn't stopped the boundary.
This is similar to the incident involving Murali a few years back, where then too, Murali had no intention in running a second run, but was going down the pitch to celebrate Sangakkarra's hundred, the New Zealand wicket-keeper took the bails off, appealed and Murali was given out.
In both cases the appeals were against the spirit of cricket, and Dhoni's decision to retract the appeal was correct albeit belatedly(though how the adoration/congratulation goes to one man rather than the team as it was a unanimous decision is beyond me).
I agree pretty well completely with Parky, perhaps it's a generational thing! Also, I always thought that to be given "run out" the batsman had to be attempting a run: Bell wasn't. And I haven't seen a replay of Kumar actually picking up the ball (to throw it casually back); are we sure he got both feet back into the field of play before picking it up?
I agree with Parky and Peter so it is definitely an age thing!
Jez is quite wrong because the issue here is that they were dealing with an unusual situation where it can be strongly argued that Bell would not have acted as he did if he thought that the ball was live. However, like Peter, I would like to have seen exactly what Kumar did on the boundary.
Kumar fell over the boundary, got up slowly, walked over to the ball slowly, picked it up and slowly lobbed it underarm to Dhoni.
To be fair to Kumar, he lost where the ball had gone, and so was sat for a while trying to find it. By the time he got up, Bell had probably started walking off, so he may well have thought that the umpire had signalled four and that it was dead ball. From the two tests I've seen of Kumar, he does not seem like the type to deceive the opposition in this way.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hFpSoRlpyMo
Apologies. I didn't intend to suggest that Kumar was trying to deceive anyone, merely that Bell and most of the other players were misled by Kumar's actions.
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