Opinion Whatzzat?

The ICC’s chief executive,Haroon Lorgat,used that exact phrase while reacting to the Bell affair: “To see players and officials uphold the great spirit of cricket,which has underpinned the game for more than a century,is very special.”

Clearly,the official definition of the game’s spirit is at odds with the perception of many in the cricketing world,including its governing body. It isn’t a real dichotomy,of course. Ask Ted Dexter or the late Colin Cowdrey — the two men responsible for initiating the spirit’s codification — and they would probably hail the Indian team for allowing Bell to bat on. Bell wasn’t run out in an underhanded manner — he had wandered out of the crease before the ball was dead — but most cricket fans would agree that there was something indefinably wrong about dismissing a batsman like that. “Under the rules he was out,but there was not a nice feeling in the dressing room. There was a bitter feeling in the stomach,” said Rahul Dravid. It wasn’t cricket,in short.

But is it cricket to accept the umpire’s decision when he gives an opponent out wrongly? On Day Two,the English team stood unmoved as they watched replays on the giant screen indicating that Harbhajan Singh,who was given out,LBW to Stuart Broad,had inside-edged the ball. Surely,skipper Andrew Strauss could have gone up to umpire Marais Erasmus and withdrawn their appeal?

Gundappa Viswanath did just that in the 1980 Bombay Test,when he trusted his judgement from first slip over the umpire’s,and recalled England wicketkeeper Bob Taylor after he was given out caught behind. Viswanath’s was an extraordinary act. It would be unfair to expect the English to follow his precedent,despite having video evidence to go by,since players and fans are conditioned to believe that batsmen have to take bad decisions in their stride. And given that the Indians had rejected the use of the Decision Review System for LBWs during the England tour,the fault for Harbhajan’s dismissal was entirely theirs.

The contrasting reactions to the Bell and Harbhajan incidents and the reluctance among a large section of cricket’s decision-makers to embrace technology both stem from the same cause: an unquestioning acceptance of the umpire’s authority. It is against the Spirit of the Game,after all,to dispute it.

Cricket’s moral code has its origins in the muscular Christianity of Victorian England,when sport became an important part of public school education,as a vehicle for teaching the values of physical fitness,discipline and,above all,conformity. This is why “dissent” — a vital part of democracy — is still a bad word in cricket,and a free ticket to the match referee’s office. The game hasn’t yet matured to an extent where it can differentiate between a player voicing a genuine grievance and a player showing a lack of respect for the umpire.

In the past,the lack of space for dissent often caused situations to boil over: the Windies’ Michael Holding kicking the stumps after a series of questionable decisions by Fred Goodall in the 1979 Dunedin Test; Sunil Gavaskar urging his teammates to walk off the field during the 1981 Melbourne Test; England’s Mike Gatting wagging his finger at Shakoor Rana in Faisalabad in 1987. All of these saw cricketers with an individualistic streak railing against the authoritarian figure of the umpire.

This tension continued to flare sporadically even after the introduction of neutral umpires,notably at the Oval in 2006,when Pakistan refused to come on to the field and forfeited a Test match after Darrell Hair alleged ball-tampering.

Through all this,umpires too have suffered. Steve Bucknor and Daryl Harper saw their careers end prematurely after poor decisions in Tests involving India. In Harper’s instance,DRS would have cut him some slack. But reviews weren’t part of the West Indies-India series thanks,ironically,to India’s opposition to the system.

If used to its fullest extent,with technology that has been tested and verified,the DRS — and not the watered-down version the ICC has put in place thanks to the disproportionate influence of one member board — would add an element of democracy to the game,by giving players space for dissent.

karthik.krishnaswamy@expressindia.com