Not ‘cricket’s darkest hour’

26 August 2006

Leo McKinstry says that the Pakistani players have behaved like spoilt children and that the sport has survived far worse controversies than this flurry of feeble pique

Whenever any crisis occurs in cricket, we hear all the old clichés about the ‘gentleman’s game’ and ‘fair play’. But in reality, ever since the sport was first played on an international basis in 1877, it has been addicted to controversy. Partly because it has been imbued with a false morality, cricket loves to whip itself into periodic spells of hysteria over the conduct of players. Throughout the past 129 years we have seen frequent rows over pay, bowlers’ actions, umpires’ decisions, team selections and bribery. Since I began following the sport in the early Seventies, I have seen the ‘death of Test cricket’ foretold over the Kerry Packer circus, when most of the top stars opted out of the official form of the game to play in a mercenary league sponsored by the Australian media mogul; over the dominance of West Indian pace bowling; over the match-fixing scandal, which revealed that the late South African captain Hansi Cronje had taken bribes to determine the outcome of international games; and — for almost two decades — over ball tampering.

But most of these controversies are quickly forgotten. The game survives. England and Australia were happily playing Tests again in 1934, within little more than a year after the end of the bodyline series. The international caravan soon moves on. So, within months of the John Lever gauze dispute, attention was focused on the Ashes series in the summer of 1977, just as this winter the Oval storm will soon be occluded by the renewed battle between England and Australia.

Leo McKinstry’s Geoff Boycott: A Cricketing Hero is published in paperback by HarperCollinsWilson.