Last summer Justin Langer complained that England's fielders had shown no remorse after Steve Harmison hit each of Australia's top three on the first morning of the Ashes series at Lord's. It was a piece of blubbing that drew a put-a-sock-in-it response even from Ricky Ponting, so the Spin wonders what the Australian captain made of Scott Styris's complaint last week that West Indies fielders were - wait for it - "laughing and joking" after he and his team-mates were hit on the helmet during New Zealand's recent first-Test win at Auckland.
"I mentioned it to Fidel Edwards after I got hit, just their lack of checking out to see if we are fine," complained Styris. "You want to play the game hard, you want to play the game fair, but you always want to make sure the other bloke isn't hurt. A posy of flowers - I'm a carnation man myself - wouldn't have gone amiss either." OK, so that last bit was made up, but thin end and wedge spring to mind. Is the Spin alone in foreseeing a situation where bowlers have to send Get Well Soon cards to any batsman they strike above the knee roll? Or perhaps pay for the batsman's counselling after trapping him lbw off an inside edge?
So how did the New Zealanders react when Shivnarine Chanderpaul asked Jamie How whether he was all right after pulling a ball from Daniel Vettori onto How's head at short leg? That's right: their wicketkeeper Brendon McCullum told Chanderpaul where to stick his apology. "You didn't show any concern before," he said within earshot of the stump microphone, thus squeezing double-standards, pettiness and hypocrisy into six much shorter words.
But the Spin was tickled by the response of Adam Parore, one of McCullum's predecessors, in his column in the New Zealand Herald. "If Brian Lara was having a bit of a chuckle, you could almost argue that he had earned the right to do so," wrote Parore. "The rest of the West Indians are journeymen who are lucky to be there. They should be on their best behaviour." In other words, cackling and pointing at a player who has just had his head knocked off by a beamer is fine - so long as you've scored a few runs beforehand. As a variation on - according to Simon Hughes - Ian Botham's favourite killer argument ("How many Test wickets did you get?"), it takes some beating.
Thursday, 23 March 2006
Bleating and whinging
This is how English weekly the Spin saw the Scott Styris led whining about "lack of compassion" on the cricket field:
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Since I am not in danger of being hit by a Fidel Edwards bouncer, no one can call me a girl's blouse, so I think I'm safe in giving my opinion on this without being accused of whining.
I find the lack of compassion shown by the West Indies when they've hit a batsman as an example of the apparent poor spirit in this series and the negativity that hangs over it. A bowler has every right to aim a delivery at a batsman, as long as it bounces, but the intention shouldn't be to actually hit him. Sure, people will get hit, but in that case the bowler should apologise.
This series has turned rather sour, with the press complaining about the Windies' performances and then the Windies complaining about the complaints in the most disrespectful way by casting aspertions on our cricketing heritage. The complaints about Styris' comments is just another instance.
I think the commentators that have bleated about Styris' whinging have missed a far more interesting angle on the story. Think back to the first test: Edwards hits Styris, Styris gives him an earful, then he responds to another bouncer by hooking it beautifully towards the boundary, where it is miraculously caught. Drama on the cricket field. The very thing that makes cricket more than just bat and ball. But then the story has another chapter: Styris complains about the bowling and when he comes in to bat in the second test, the Windies come alive, they put fielders on the leg-side boundary, tempt him with bouncers, get under skin and get him out playing a nervous shot. High drama.
Has anyone reported on this mini battle? I don't think so. Instead we get the Spin's predictable pseudo-macho grandstanding questioning Styris' manliness, missing even the fact that if it was wrong for Styris to complain in public, then he got his comeuppance on the field.
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