Afridi guilty of no more than adding a modern twist to the oldest trick in the book

Afridi Guilty of No More Than Adding A Modern Twist to the Oldest Trick in the Book

Mike Selvey
Thursday November 24, 2005
The Guardian

If the cricketers of England and Pakistan have learned one thing from the second Test in Faisalabad it is that there is no hiding place on the field. Shahid Afridi found this out the hard way, when he used the distraction of an explosion on the boundary edge and its aftermath to surreptitiously attempt to rough up the surface of the pitch with his spikes. Leaving aside the ethics of even thinking of such a ruse while many people in the ground, not least the teams in the middle, were still wondering whether anyone had actually been blown to bits, the notion that he thought no one would be watching is astonishing. I have a vision of him pirouetting on a length while whistling "You've got to pick a pocket or two" from Oliver!


Fixed cameras picked him up, and by them was he condemned to spectate the final Test and the first two one-day internationals, thereby depriving Pakis-tan's public of his talents - witness the hoards who shoe-horned into the Iqbal Stadium specifically to watch him yesterday and, as if my magic, siphoned out again when he was out first ball - and himself of the furtherance of his career.

His action was against the laws of cricket and as a consequence the International Cricket Council code of conduct, so he received the prescribed punishment. Knowing the consequence of his actions he deserves what he got. But to be really honest I find it hard to get worked up about it, or the warnings given yesterday to his young colleague Salman Butt, any more than I do about some of the more hysterical aspects of so-called ball-tampering.

There are several reasons for this. The first perhaps is in case someone remembers from the very dim and distant past a similar incident in my own career and throws it back my way. For the record, the match was against Lancashire at Old Trafford and I was bowling to the England opener Barry Wood. He played a ball back down the pitch which I gathered in an extended follow-through before turning, with a swivel, roughly on a length, corkscrewing a hole with my spikes which, being intended for wet weather, were like crampons. Woody came down the pitch, hammered it all back into place with the back of his bat and waved an admonishing finger at me. "Naughty, naughty Michael." I felt this small. The umpires said not a Dicky bird.

Secondly, and prompted by the warnings given to Butt, the deliberate scuffing up of a pitch by batsmen has been going on for as long as the game itself. The tactic generally was for batsmen in the latter stages of an innings, if the side was on top and looking to bowl out the opposition in the fourth innings, to change their crepe or rubber soled boots should they be wearing them and, with spikes on, pretend to look for plenty of impossibly short singles that involved taking several scuffy strides down the pitch to calls of, "Wait, wait" before scuttling back into the crease again. Thereby could the spinners later get to work. It was just part of the game, in the same way that lifting the seam was, or rubbing a bit of hair oil into the ball to bring up a nice mahogany shine. Sometimes the umpires, far from condemning, were almost gleefully complicit. " If you don't get five wickets with that, you'll never make a bowler." Before the game's ruling bodies went all righteous, these were cricket's equivalent of the motorway speed limit.

I have, however, witnessed something that would send shivers down the spine of Darrell Hair and send ICC match referees into salivation. In February 1977 England were playing India in Mumbai in the final Test of a series in which they had already overcome the brilliant spinners of the home side to take the honours. For this last game, India chose to open the bowling with an all-rounder called Karsan Ghavri, who bowled both left-arm pace and spin, and the great opening batsman Sunil Gavaskar, whose 125-match Test career involved so much bowling that he sent down a precise total of 380 deliveries for the single wicket of Zaheer Abass, taken in the same Iqbal Stadium in which England now find themselves.

Gavaskar bowled just two overs in the first innings. The second innings, though, was something else. Bowling to the England opener Dennis Amiss, Gavaskar sent down six extremely short bouncers, each of which cleared the batsman's head by a distance, with the bowler then following through, his feet shuffling rapidly, smack down the middle of the pitch from one end until he was right under the batsman's nose at the other. Take him off? He only wanted the one over and he was off anyway. No one gave that a second thought either.

Source

Doesn't excuse what afridi did.

Does put paid to a lot of the hype about the incident though. Especially in light of what Bell and co. got away with in the same test.

Bell's "cheating" is not in the same league as Afridi's transgression.
The only reason why we are still talking about the Bell incident is because Rashid latif( unfairly) ended up with a 5 match ban for his claimed catch. Otherwise Bell's incident is no diff from a batsman who doesn't walk after nicking the ball to the keeper or a fielder who appeals for a bat pad catch when there is no edge.

Afridi's incident is no bigger either. Every single team in the world does it, discreetly. The only mistake Afridi made was getting caught. Both England, when they throw the ball in the middle of the pitch so that Geraint has to run over it to get the ball, and Afridi, who waltzed, are doing the same thing. Only the method is different. Both are equally despicable.

When people make winding speeches about the spirit of the game etc. they should remember that.

EDIT: On second thought, they aren't equally despicable. In Afridi's case, it was a moment of madness after Pakistan being extremely hard done by by the umpires. In England's case, it's a planned team strategy.

Bob Woolmer in his recent article wrote a good thing, let me share it with u "Yet having put the pressure back on England, he released it by walking up the pitch and deliberately scuffing it. Why would he do this? He is extremely remorseful and has apologised to his side as well as to England. I guess only a psychologist would be able to figure it out. Naturally, he wants Pakistan to win and I suppose it was this that led to his breaking the rules. His ban from the next Test and two one-day internationals is correct because this was an indefensible act. "

I totally agree with Bobby