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wPremeditation? Did Deepti Sharma intend to hit the ball? Why didn’t she do what she did earlier and not when she got too anxious if she was so concerned about the laws of the game? Is she comfortable winning this way?
Did Captain Harmanpreet Kaur know about the plan? Was it an individual thing or a team plan? Was a warning given? Whose warning was the umpire or the batter? Is Harmanpreet comfortable winning this way?
These constitute a collection of impressive and crucial questions, which have been posed to the Indian basketball player and captain. However, the third set of questions deserves to be asked more than they are being asked at the moment.
Why did Charlie Dean come out of its folds? Why weren’t you watching the ball? Did you premeditately get out of bending it before throwing the ball? Did she ever intend to stay? How many times have you done that? Would her batting partner feel comfortable recording her running in this way? Is this an individual thing or a team plan?
To be clear, Dean did nothing wrong. There should be no stigma attached to being out of your crease. Except there are consequences to that in the Laws of the Game, and you should be able to live with them when you apply. With the exception of Peter Dela Pena’s genius Twitter thread, Dean and England have not faced the kind of scrutiny and questioning of their intentions that India has had to face.
The more the spotlight changes in this way, the clearer the hierarchy of power will be. The look that is cast at a player who has already applied the law is an effective tool for making them question their actions. In the process, those with the advantage remain blissfully unaware of themselves.
Keemo Paul is a prime example of a player who was on the receiving end in this way. He caused such a run to win a crucial Under-19 World Cup match, cried in his hotel room after the reaction it provoked, and told me he had decided not to repeat it, not because he thought he was wrong but because he had lost the will to face the attacks in the aftermath. Three years later, the MCC–no less–kept the eye on R Ashwin stopping in a delivery pitch when he hit one such run, but made no comment on the number of times Joss Butler, the batsman involved, stole ground in the run-up to dismissal.
This view is integral to perpetuating the power hierarchy. The view is higher than the view. In this case, the usual suspects claim moral superiority even though the MCC has finally followed the ICC in trying to discredit the player embroiled in this latest chapter.
The first hierarchy of power is the hierarchy of batsmen over bowlers, which has existed since the days of amateur batsmen and professional bowlers in England. Most international captains are heavy hitters. The ICC cricket committee includes eight ex-players, two bowlers and one in-game. The other power structure involved is even more sinister.
As Abhishek Mukherjee writes on wisden.com, this style of segregation was prevalent before Venu Mankad as well. No ethical questions were attached to this dismissal when the English bowlers used to impress them. Confusing, indiscriminate, and exclusionary codes of honor are embedded in hierarchies. In the wider world, these manifest themselves in the form of dress codes, customs, etiquette, appropriate definitions of patriotism, blasphemy, and so on.
Players who extol not walking when out, who resume when they realize the batter is not out, who bully players they deem to be “mentally weak”, who run in the way of throwing, and who indulge in many such actions to gain a competitive advantage under the action of the rules, consider this type Running out is an immoral act.
It is immoral because it is not “earned”, not pure luck as when someone is caught off the body of a non-attacker, and it occurs before the actual duel begins, although the laws clearly state that the ball becomes live at the beginning of the period in which preceded. If the morality police stop to think, they will come face to face with the mental gymnastics they need to indulge in just to take the focus off their abuser.
The mere fact that you question the inconsistency automatically renders you unable to understand the moral superiority of those who decide to act is immoral. It’s a self-contained vicious cycle where you either follow it blindly or face ridicule.
‘Tough but fair’ Australian cricket is an abstraction that takes in flamboyant captains who claim catches from the ground, wicked skates, batting insinuating bowling on the out after being dismissed by the bowler but screaming murder when Virat Kohli questions their captain’s integrity. When someone puts their sleds back on, there miraculously appears an uncrossable line, which has been drawn by Australia and whose location only they know.
Using a lozenge to achieve a reverse swing is fine in England until such time as others do it or do it differently. The definitions of perfect pitch that so often emerge when a Test ends in two days disappear in Asia when the ancient ball swings spectacularly in the second innings as it did in the last two-day Test at The Oval. Such rhetoric often stems from these two countries, and is sometimes supported by New Zealand and South Africa.
Financial power in sport now rests with Asia, especially India, but when it comes to controlling the narratives, Australia and England are still way ahead of the other teams. They have more articulate players who have been trained to handle the media from an early age. Their teams and boards also have the most professional media management arms. Commentators—not all of them—get the message across more efficiently than those from other countries.
Look around you. These hierarchies of power are everywhere. The lower a person is in the power structure—a religious minority, an immigrant, a historically disadvantaged class, non-male, non-heterosexual—the greater the burden on them to act properly and carry the weight of their society on their shoulders. Those who wield power hardly face this scrutiny. If someone from a disadvantaged background earns money and power, they are still subject to exclusion by arcane symbols.
This is why it is important to turn heads. When Deepti ran into Dean, the on-air caller at the time, Nasir Hussain, who is a wonderful commentator and has his opinion, said much more than that by what he hadn’t said: “I’m not sure. I know he is.” [permitted] In the laws of the game … “
It is not ideal to say something to that effect or to question the batsman’s integrity the next time someone is caught from his crease before the ball is bowled, because in a competitive sport played within the rules it is best to keep morals to oneself. But if such a thing were to happen, it would make batters experience what it means to doubt themselves and worry about backlash—just as players do when these dismissals are made. –Cricinfo
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