What a load of old w**k

Simon Barnes is arguably the best English sports-writer of the last decade so it is with some trepidation that I tackle his column in Monday's Times. He writes with a style and panache that us mere mortals could only dream of. However I do sometimes wonder how much substance is behind that style that threatens to cross over into hubris.

Ball tampering is like masturbation: everyone knows it goes on, no one will ever admit to doing it. To be accused of doing it is the most terrible insult a man can be offered and to be caught doing it is the most hideous disgrace anybody could imagine.

FJM, which part inspired this blog, use to love highlighting the use of sloppy food metaphors. I don't think I really want to go down the path of flagging sloppy sex metaphors or innuendo (and not just because I've already used the words tackle and column in my opening sentence), that's not what this blog is meant to be about. Besides which, that's actually a fantastic metaphor. In 48 words he has summed up the taboo nature of ball-tampering. It is writing like that which has seen Barnes win numerous awards. He could probably end his column there, or in a paragraph's time. Nice and pithy.

Ah, but there's more. Over 500 words more, must fill the column space, must fill the column space.....

But that’s cricket for you: always some terrible hideous sin, always some ghastly scandal, always a vast and tortuous moral maze to negotiate. Bodyline is the most extraordinary incident in sport — extraordinary not in what happened on the pitch, but in the complex reactions of all concerned.

So far so good. Cricket does have a strange relationship with morality: after all it is the sport that gave birth to the phrase "it's not cricket". There is a myth - and it always has been a myth - about sportsmanship and cricket that players have had to negotiate around, be it WG Grace retorting "they've come here to watch me bat, not you bowl" as he replaced the bails, or a batsman deciding whether to walk or wait for the umpire's verdict.

It is also an excellent point about the reaction to Bodyline, the most extraordinary thing about the entire affair was in the reaction to it. I never cease to be amazed by how it is us English who are referred to as "whinging poms" when it is our convict brethren down under - Prisoners of Mother England quite literally - who whinged so incessantly throughout the Bodyline series.

Then there was throwing. Sober judges believed throwing would destroy the game, and no doubt life as we know it as well. Throwing was not so much cheating as sin. It would “lead to the greatest catastrophe in cricket history”, Don Bradman said. The no-balling of Muttiah Muralitharan for alleged chucking has been a rumbling scandal and cause of resentment for years.

OK, so sober judges don't always get it right. Point taken.

There have been a million books on Bodyline, at least two just last year. I can also remember a book on the history of throwing. Can you imagine such a thing in other sports? The History of the Crooked Put-in? Pinching Yards at Throw-ins and Free Kicks?

Hmmm. A million books on Bodyline. I know this column likes accuracy in its stats but we'll let him get away with some poetic licence. But I'm not too sure what exactly his point proves.

First, I'd suggest that cricket has a far richer literary history than either football or rugby. Has football produced a CLR James or Neville Cardus? If it, or indeed rugby, has I'm unaware of that writer. Neither have these sports produced an Almanac quite as revered as Wisden. It would therefore follow that cricket was more likely to produce books regardless of any tortuous moral maze that had to be followed in that sport but not others.

Secondly,  those books were I think as much about the reaction to Bodyline, a reaction he has already acknowledged was remarkable. Is this not therefore repeating the same point?

The West Indies tactic of playing four superb fast bowlers in the same team was also regarded as immoral. They bowled short and asked questions about the courage of the batsmen: outrageous. When the West Indies bowlers declined to pitch it up to Pat Pocock, the England nightwatchman, Wisden thundered about the team’s lack of chivalry. The number of bouncers permitted in an over became a subject of legislation.

OK, are we going anywhere with this? As a result of that rule change you are only allowed to bang in 2 bouncers an over, yet you've spent the last four paragraphs hammering essentially the same point. At the risk of sounding like Wisden (I wish!) aim for the target - the stumps. Although it should be pointed out with this amount of padding, the article isn't going to hurt as much if it does hit you.

And then there is ball tampering. Pakistan surrendered a Test match rather than play on after being accused of ball tampering. Ian Botham took Imran Khan to the High Court over allegations of ball tampering. Now South Africa, unable to take 20 wickets in a match three times running, have decided that since England managed that feat, they must be tampering with the ball.

Ah, finally! Back on topic. Ball-tampering. No, not that kind, I said I didn't want to go down that route. The illegal altering of the condition of a cricket ball. The very accusation of which was sufficient for Pakistan to forfeit a test match. Enough for Ian Botham to take Imran Khan to the High Court over? Well not quite, Botham sued when Khan had appeared to suggest that he was “racist, ill-educated and lacking in class”, but ball-tampering was the back-drop for this unsightly spat, so it is sort of right.

But surely Barnes has curiously missed out one infamous case here - where is mention of his own newspaper's chief cricket writer, who nearly lost the England captaincy over the issue during the "dirt in the pocket" controversy?

And that brings us up to now. If England's success is a factor in South Africa's complaints - and remember England have in two out of three attempts failed to bowl South Africa out twice - it does seem strange that South Africa should complain of ball-tampering in an innings in which England's bowlers were looking least dangerous.

As a result, England and South Africa go into the last Test of a fraught series filled with all kinds of bitterness. South Africa think England are all cheats, while England have said that South Africa are malicious. And all because of a crime that is part of cricket’s daily life.

Is it part of cricket's daily life? South Africa certainly don't think it is as open and shut as that.

There are two matters to dwell on here. The first is that no sport does moral outrage quite as comprehensively as cricket. For that matter, the only area of life that does moral outrage so well involves religious fundamentalism.

I suppose it is possible that the Daily Mail involves religious fundamentalism.

(If I wasn’t already a Doctor of Letters, I would write a doctorate-level thesis about cricket and religion.)

**head explodes**
**checks to see if it is my head or Simon Barnes' head**

But there is another point. All the great scandals of cricket history — at any rate, those that have come up through the playing of the game — come down to the crimes of bowlers. It is bowlers who, by bowling short, by bowling at a leg-side field, by bowling with a crooked arm, by messing about with the ball, are committing moral outrages, behaviour that might destroy the game.

Is this the case? What about as I referred to above, WG Grace replacing the bails, or batsmen failing to walk? What about batsman deliberately running down the middle of the pitch with their spikes, or Dennis Lillee attempting to use an aluminium bat? Or are you saying that these are not perceived as scandalous as they should be? Presumably match-fixing - which reputedly involved players getting out before a certain score, would fall outside your category of having arisen through the playing of the game (although gambling was intricately intertwined with the development of the game).

In any case, is this not just a product of batsmen being essentially reactive to the fielding side, a passive entity until the ball is delivered? Surely they have a more limited scope to commit moral outrage?

Meanwhile, the game really is being destroyed before our eyes. It is being destroyed by the technologies of pitch preparation, bat manufacture and protective clothing. Batsmen, playing on chief executive wickets, in helmets, with supersonic railway sleepers in their hands, facing, in one-day cricket, compulsory batsman-friendly fields and draconian calling of wides, with the help of the occasional free hit, have never had it so good.

Wait a minute! The game is being destroyed before our eyes? When? How? Whom? Why didn't someone tell me sooner, I could have saved myself the trouble of sitting down and watching five days of gripping test match action that went thrillingly down to the wire.

WHAT TEST HAVE YOU BEEN WATCHING BARNES?

Sure, cricket is evolving and not all changes are necessarily for the better (even if they are predominantly for the batter), but I don't think test cricket is in too sorry a state when three of England's last eight matches have gone down to the final ball of the final hour on the final day with the last wicket partnership at the crease. Test cricket is not just a battle between bat and ball; it is also a battle against the clock. And rarely has that battle ever been more exquisitely poised than in the past six months or so.

Those supersonic railway sleepers have also produced quicker scoring rates which has enabled more results. The balance may not be quite perfect, but I certainly wouldn't pick this last test, the 1946th (nor indeed the 1945th, the Australia v Pakistan match at the SCG) to suggest that test cricket is moribund.

But then maybe sober judges - like we must presume Barnes to be - don't always get it right when they predict the demise of the game and the world as we know it.

The game is marketed, organised and legislated on the belief that the ultimate excitement in cricket is a six. It is not. The ultimate point of arousal in cricket is the wicket.

**rolls over and lights cigarette**

But across the cricketing ages, and to an ever-increasing extent, a bowler who looks for an advantage is a moral outlaw — while any batsmen can just help himself to the proliferating advantages that are thrust at him on all sides.

  **Puts out cigarette and falls asleep**