Cricket's Shame

So much for the spirit of cricket. Like almost everyone in the world I have no idea what really happened yesterday, whether or not Pakistan did tamper with the ball, and so I'd rather not make any comment about it.

However there has been some truly pathetic comment on the matter from people in positions of power. One was from the head of the PCB, Shaharyar Khan, who said that the ball that was replaced had been hit for several sixes and fours and hence the damage to it. If you are going to defend yourself against an accusation, which is fair enough, at least get your facts right, before it makes you look like a fool. In fact two sixes were hit, by Kevin Pietersen, after the ball had been replaced.

The second pathetic comment is from Andrew Miller in a piss-poor article for Cricinfo (linked to above). I am afraid I'm going to fisk it a bit. But not too much.

According to him the most "chilling" part of the day was the booing of the (mainly English of course) fans! Phew. Well done to Andrew for exposing the real villians of the piece, the ignorant English fans. You see, they were "ignorant" - they genuinely had no idea who was to blame but just blamed the Pakistan team anyway. Well Andrew, whatever the rights and wrongs of the decision to punish Pakistan, who was it who refused to take the field? Whose protest caused the umpires to call the game off, as is clearly written in the laws of the game? Whose decision not to play wasted those fans' money? Crowds boo players in all sorts of sports for all sorts of reasons, and it is not "chilling", it is a sign of disgust, which the fans are absolutely entitled to make. This is my favourite bit:

So to hear the boos at The Oval yesterday was a frightful jolt back to reality. It was a reminder of the ignorance that has tainted so much of the dialogue between East and West, because the crowds were being fed limited information, and their preconceived notions were doing the rest. [my italics]

Ah, you see, the fans are really just pawns in a game of geopolitics; their actions are metaphors for international relations; they're not pissed off fans at all angry at wasting their time and money, they're prejudiced members of a (single entity) West that treats the (also single entity)East with contempt. Andrew doesn't really go into detail as to what "preconceived notions" the fans held, but we don't really need to go too far. He is precariously close to calling the fans the "r -word", which coming from a person working in the media doesn't surprise me at all, though it should.

I like this too : "and not one of the 26 cameras that Sky has permanently trained on the action has yet produced any evidence to back up this lofty claim. How curious." [my italics again]

How does he know this? Has he examined all the footage? and has he examined the ball? Presumably the ball itself is the evidence which Andrew seeks. But that's not the point - It's a conspiracy, you see. That last sentence quoted above is the kind of sentence that ufo researchers used to write when, having no evidence at all to back up their opinions, didn't want to sound extreme, so decided to put it obliquely, just so that we all knew what they meant anyway. "...the original claim put out by RAAF that they had discovered a flying disk was changed to the discovery of a weather balloon. How curious," and that sort of thing.

And anyway! Even if they are guilty of ball tampering, who cares! It's a stupid rule! not an exact quote, but not too far off- need I say more about the intellectual clout needed to write a paragraph of this standard.

and the final paragraph - the coup de grace:

Here is one such depressing missive. "There is no doubt of the racism and hatred that the British have towards the Muslims and especially Pakistan ." It's just not true - look at the evidence of this series for starters. Actually, after today, it's best not to.

You don't have to be Jacques Derrida to see the implications of this. "After today", you can't look at this series for evidence that "the hatred" that "the British have towards the Muslims" is untrue. [Sigh] In other words, hate towards Muslims is implied by Sunday's events. and so it all comes down to racism in the end. The fans, Darrell Hair - whoever.

I have no idea what happened on the field. Pakistan, I would say, are probably innocent and the ball, maybe of inferior quality, just got scuffed up. I don't know. but I do know that self serving and self righteous claptrap by those in power, blaming the blameless - the fans - is no use, and resorting to sneaky and unfounded allegations of racism is lazy and "ignorant" journalism.