It has become clear that the International Cricket Council pays close attention to this column.
Alert readers will recall that a couple of years ago I raised the subject of chucking. Every honest cricketer, I said, could spot a chucker from a hundred paces. I said that off-spinners were the bowlers most likely to chuck, that the doosra could not be bowled without chucking, that Muralitharan was a chucker from the moment he first stepped onto a cricket field to the moment he stepped off it 800 test wickets later, and that there was a plague of chuckers in the modern game as every cricketer knew but as the authorities were too scared to admit.
The same alert reader will recall that within months of the publication of that article the ICC announced that it was having a blitz on – well, would you believe it? – chuckers. All the obvious culprits whom everybody had known about for years – Saeed Ajmal, Kane Williamson, Sunil Narine – were suddenly told to stay behind after school and whisked off to a sort of Guantanamo Bay for chuckers where they either successfully underwent a programme of re-education or they were silently eliminated from polite society.
Here at column headquarters we felt more than a little pride at the good we had done the game and more than a little excited by the power. So much more than a little excited, indeed, that we have now decided to swing our mighty attention (and that ‘we’ is so royal we expect people to kneel at the sight of it) onto another curse of the modern game. That curse is sledging.
Sledging is cheating. Sledgers are cheats. Sledging poisons a game of cricket. Indeed cricket with sledging isn’t a game. It’s a gutter wrestle over a bag of bones. For a victory won with sledging is a victory won without honour. And a victory won without honour is a defeat.
Sledging is not banter. Banter has always been part of the game. Banter is funny. Banter is enjoyed by both sides. Sledging is enjoyed by neither.
The aim of sledging is to intimidate or unnerve an opponent by abusing or threatening him. Off the field it’s a criminal offence.
Australians are the worst. The loathsome coach of their national team calls it ‘an aggressive brand of cricket.’ Ha. Everyone can see how they go about things. Except, it seems, the ICC.
But now that this column has spoken, you just watch. The ICC will have no choice. Within a year – mark my words here – they will feel obliged to act to eradicate the scourge of sledging. And if they put their minds to it, it will be no harder than nailing the chuckers. Sledging is obvious to all men of decency.
Here at Column HQ we will get no credit, of course, but we don’t seek credit. It will be more than enough reward to know that we have done some little service to the game we love.