Ian Bell is a good batsman. Thats all he is. He is not an umpire. He is not a match referee. He is not the sole authority on the cricket field. At some point yesterday he decided he was all of these things. He assumed that the ball was dead. Him and him alone. His batting partner, Eoin Morgan didn't. The bowler didn't. The fielder who had thrown the ball in didn't. And the umpires didn't. Yet in a supreme display of arrogance, Bell trotted over to his batting partner, who looked most uncomfortable about the whole affair since he had just put his bat in the crease after attempting to warn Bell, and knew something unfortunate was about to occur.
Make no mistake, the error was Bell's and Bell's alone, nothing but sheer stupidity. But it gets worse from here. Ignore the indignation from the English, who almost drowned twitter out with calls for Dhoni's head for, well, doing the correct thing. As the umpires asked Dhoni if he wanted to uphold the appeal, they also turned to the English batsmen and asked them to wait on the field until a decision had been made. Bell's arrogance took to the fore again and he marched off, seemingly as oblivious to their request as he seemed to the entire run out fiasco. Note that even at that point the umpires had still not called Tea, it was Bell who took it upon himself to declare the session over. Bell was actually stopped just before he left the ground to his obvious disgust by the fourth umpire, who politely reminded him that the session had not in fact officially ended.
For such blatant disregard to an umpire's authority, a player has already been penalized in this test, too bad he isn't English though, because they are praised for this sort of behavior. Already in this test we've seen Graeme Swann kick the stumps in disgust at his own performance, and despite being his second offence in under three months, escape with a reprimand. "Look here you jolly old fellow, we love your witty banter on twitter, but you can't go around kicking the stumps when you feel like it. Just quickly apologize for it and we'll sweep it under the carpet."
The most petulant and a serial offender in the English side, much like his father before him, and rewarded with T20 captaincy - this is the same bowler who is the only international cricketer to have conceded 6 sixes in an over in a T20 match - Stuart Broad, took it upon himself to step into his father's shoes and check if VVS Laxman had applied Vaseline to his bat. The English seem to think this sort of behavior is amusing, its a bit like throwing jelly beans on the pitch, its all in good fun when you're not at the receiving end. Insinuate that an Englishman might be a cheat and you'll get the response the Pakistani team received after their counter accusations during the spot fixing brouhaha.
Andrew Strauss and Andy Flower chose to approach Dhoni during the Tea interval and ask him to reconsider his appeal. This has been described as "most unorthodox" but the more simple way of describing it is that it was way out of line. You cannot go to the opposition and ask them to play in a manner that suits your players after your very players are solely responsible for an incident because of their stupidity, and especially not after the mob you're leading onto the field has already acted so disgracefully. The trouble is, nobody seems to be telling England that they're behaving terribly. Oh no, quite the opposite.
Here's how Haroon Lorgat, CEO of the ICC, described the incident and the conduct of the players. "Absolute credit must go to Team India, the England team and the match officials - Ranjan Madugalle, Asad Rauf and Marais Erasmus as well as the off-field umpires Billy Bowden and Tim Robinson - for the superb way that they all handled a tricky situation. While the initial appeal and umpire decision may have been acceptable to the letter of the law, the decision by India captain M S Dhoni and his team -as well as the Team India coaching staff - to withdraw the appeal shows great maturity. To see players and officials uphold the Great Spirit of cricket, which has underpinned the game for more than a century, is very special. I am indeed grateful for the way that the teams and match officials handled what was clearly a difficult situation and their behaviour reflects well on everyone."
I'm not sure what Lorgat is smoking, but he did get a few things right, so it might not be the best stuff out there on the market. The umpires and the Indian Team deserve praise. Don't discount the role of the umpires here, they could have chosen to act as heavy handed as Daryl Hair did at the Oval during Inzimam's protest and taken the incident to a whole different level. Madugalle's lenient reprimand to Swann and his overlooking Broad's distasteful accusation, doesn't deserve credit. And England's conduct definitely does not either. The "Great Spirit of Cricket" shouldn't win any accolades today, it was in fact insulted because it asks players to play fair, within the rules and to respect umpires. But more so because it promotes equality and equal treatment to players, and by all indications from the ICC's statement, equality seems to be used rather judiciously, and certainly selectively.
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