On Walking, and Talking

So there you have it. Australia sneak a thriller in Sydney. I think the turning point was the dismissal of Dravid, c. Gilchrist b. Bucknor for a well-made 38, just as he was running into some form. Added to Bucknor’s fine unbeaten 132 in the first innings (through his alter ego Andrew Symonds), he should be feeling hard-done by at being overlooked for the man of the match award. What were the adjudicators thinking?

This post is not going to be a dispassionate analysis of the game. I am too angry for that. So I will not talk about Laxman’s sublime genius; Tendulkar’s brilliance; Kumble’s tenacity; or the accomplished but relatively ugly knocks of Hayden and Hussey. (I won’t even include Symonds’ knock in this list because most batsmen on either side could make 162 in 5 innings). I will not even talk about all the umpiring errors – the 4 times Symonds was given not out in his knock, first off a palpable nick, then off a stumping that the third umpire got wrong, then plumb lbw, then another stumping that the third umpire didn’t even get to get wrong; Ponting knocking the cover off the ball to Dhoni but being given not out; Hussey elegantly flicking behind to be given, yes, not out; Dravid being given caught behind with the bat miles from the ball; Ganguly given out caught because Ricky Ponting said so, a few overs after he claimed a catch for a ball that clearly hit the ground as he took it. I will not mention the odd and unexplained decision to extend play to 6.44 in the middle of proceedings, a farcical change of the rules that reminded one of the “officiating” in the World Cup final. Nor will I, god forbid, mention the fact that Australia’s 16-match winning streak has occurred on the back of the diabolical decision against Sangakkara by Rudi Koertzen, cutting short one of the great innings of the modern era, let alone the 8 to 10 diabolical decisions in this Test. (Shakoor Rana, take a hike. You have met your match in Bucknor, Koertzen and Benson). And absolutely will not mention the fact that had errors of this magnitude been committed by a Pakistani umpire, we wouldn’t have heard commentary about the “pressures of umpiring” or it “all evening out in the end”. (It’s a different matter that errors of this magnitude would never be committed by the two Pakistani umpires on the elite panel at the moment, Aleem Dar and Asad Rauf, two of the best in the business. But that’s a different story). And I absolutely will not commend Kumble’s absolutely scintillating, succinct and honest statement after the match that only one team played in the spirit of the game. No, all I want to talk about in this post is walking.

There is no question that Andrew Symonds nicked Ishant Sharma big time when he was on 30 in the 1st innings. Had he been given, as he should have, Australia would have been 193 for 7. Even if Lee and Hogg had played as well as they did, they would have ended up at around 325. With a deficit of 200, Ponting would have certainly not been able to declare when he did, and at the very least, a draw would have been secured. Evens out, my ass.

But that’s not what I’m interested in. I’m interested in the talk that went around it. I want, especially, to start with Symonds. He suggested at the end of his first innings (well, actually, his fifth innings, but we won’t go there) that while he clearly edged the ball, people make mistakes, umpires make mistakes as well, as this time the rub of the green went with him, so he won’t complain.

I will say just one thing to this, which is that I entirely agree with the bloke. I believe it’s the umpire’s prerogative to give a batsman out, just as it is a fielder’s prerogative to appeal in order for a dismissal to be given. It is true that there is a so-called “spirit” to the game that suggests that batsmen who nick the ball should walk. But given the sorts of decisions Ganguly and Tendulkar got in England last summer, it is clear that walking only when the umpire thinks you’re out makes sense; otherwise, you’re going to end up on the debit side of things. It is also true that the great batsmen do walk – Brian Lara, for instance, was always a walker. But we know that the Aussies are not truly great, merely bullies who pretend. Sort of like George W. Bush. So let’s classify them with the mere mortals that they are – they, unlike Lara, should only walk when they’re given.

Indeed, one of the finest innings I’ve seen was consequent to a non-walk, which is Nasser Hussein against India at Edgbaston in 1996. A youngster then, he tried square-cutting Kumble behind, only to get the biggest edge in the world to be given not out. He didn’t walk, and went on to get a 100 – which turned out not just to be a match-winning 100, but a series-winning one. In a series between equals, these little strokes of luck make a difference. When you claim to be a champion team, like the Aussies do, you’re not supposed to need incompetence on the part of the umpire and dishonesty on the part of the batsman to make that difference.

My problem is not with the walking (or lack thereof), but with the talking. For let us remember (unlike the Channel 9 commentary team, which is all I, based in the US, unfortunately have access to) that while there is nothing wrong with not walking, it is these Australians, merely three years ago, who made such a fuss about walking. Yes, indeed. The Final Frontier men. Those Under Gilchrist (because Punter, poor chap, had hurt his little finger). Or Thugs, as the acronym suggests. Who can forget (except Mark Taylor, Ian Healy, Michael Slater, Bill Lawry, Tony Greig and their ilk) that a mere three years ago, these very same Aussies were going on and on about how important it is to walk?!?

Yes, indeed. I remember (spluttering now with rage) that the Conquering of the Final Frontier in 2004 was marked by an enormous fuss that the Aussies created about how they were now suddenly Walkers. Gilchrist, leading by example, did it (and so too, as Mukul Kesavan points out in his wonderful Men in White, did the likes of Gillespie and Kasprowicz, albeit far more reluctantly. Let us remember that these last two were tailenders, Dizzy’s 200 in Bangladesh notwithstanding).

So fair enough. Symonds thinks, on January 2, 2008, that Life is a Sucker, But it Evens Out in the End. I would have had no problems with that, except that simply 3 years ago, these very same Aussies (not Symonds – he wasn’t good enough to be a part of the team) were prancing around in their Little Lord Fauntleroy costumes, talking about Walking as if they were in a Lipitor commercial. If you’re going to be a hard-headed professional, at least be honest about it, like Nasser Hussein.

The Aussies beat India, unfair and square. Regardless – they are a far better team. But we already knew that. My question is simple – do the Aussies really need only 19 wickets to win a game? Does the opposition really need 24 wickets to beat Australia? If (as Symonds claims) batsmen shouldn’t be upset when umpires give them four extra innings, then are we to understand that all the talk in 2004 was merely a PR exercise on the Aussies’ part, no more genuine that Monsanto’s claim that no, really, they are acting on behalf of Third World farmers?

It wasn’t just Symonds who benefited from the umpires’ largesse. The entire middle order, bar Michael Clarke, did. So Clarke, for good measure, refused to walk after cutting the ball straight to slip.

When I am less livid, I will write more cogently. But for me, this Aussie win has no meaning, and if the Indians had any self-respect, they would simply refuse to play the rest of this tour on grounds on incompetent and blatantly unfair officiating. Peter English has already made the point in his excellent and immediate analysis on cricinfo.

But the bigger point is this. Either Symonds, in his quote (and Ponting, Hussey, and Clarke, in their actions), are making a mockery of the principles that the Aussies set for themselves in the previous encounter between the two teams; or those principles were simply a sham, a publicity to the world that bear no relation to the actual attitudes of Australian players about fair play and honesty.

My really simple question, therefore, is the following – based on all the talk that the Aussies themselves have generated (talk, by the way, that truly great teams like the West Indians of the 1970s and 1980s never indulged in, because they believed in performance on the field):

Are the Aussies liars, or are they cheats?