Fair play and playing cricket in the spirit it has always been played is slowly being eroded away.
The gentleman's sport is what cricket is widely known as and having grown up playing this sport you would often question if this was still how the sport is regarded. Most sports have changed from the early days mainly due to the sports turning professional and like anything that has money involved the seriousness changes the behavior of the players involved.
Yesterday during the Cricket World Cup involving Bangladesh and Sri Lanka we had another flare up which you would not have witnessed 30 years ago. I say that as that was when I was still playing and even though I was very competitive there were things you just would never do or even consider. A Sri Lankan batsmen was timed out having gone past the two minutes allocated giving the batsmen enough time to prepare to face their first ball.
Angelo Matthews was the batsmen in question and made it out to the middle with time to spare. Once at the batting crease he noticed the batting helmet strap was broken and asked for a replacement helmet. This would have been normal except the Bangladesh skipper inquired via an appeal and Matthews was technically timed out. Would you consider this gentlemanly behavior or unsporting even though Bangladesh were well within the rights to appeal.
In my opinion there is a line you don't cross and must always ask yourself would the other team behave and act in the same way? Because these instances are so rare the answer would be no and why it is unsporting behavior. This was not like this was a crunch game with serious implications as both teams have already been eliminated from the knockout rounds. One can imagine how desperate Bangladesh must be to drop to these levels and to think this is appropriate. As I said this was legal and no rules had been broken so Bangladesh were well within their rights.
When I was playing you had 60 seconds as a batsmen to cross the boundary line, but no one was looking at the clock. This was normally straight forward unless there was a batting collapse seeing multiple players scrambling for their gear, but this was never seen as a real rule that would have you timed out. Unfortunately if a player appeals the umpires have to stick to the laws regardless of what they think of whether it is right or not.
In the last few years we have seen some questionable behavior driven by an attitude to win at all costs. Great teams win matches on the field by the way they play and not by questionable methods. We have seen the Mankad rule come into play where a bowler can run out a batsmen who is out of his ground before bowling the ball. In the past bowlers would threaten a batsman backing up or stealing ground, but besides a few exceptions would not follow through with the threat.
Earlier this year we saw the Ashes series Australia vs England) bought into question with what some would call unsporting behavior. These decisions again were all legal, but could have been over ruled by the on field captain and weren't. Cricket is still the same game I loved and played except those playing it think very differently. I hate losing, but would only want to win because we deserved to win by being the better team.
