Sledging gets milder and milder but is it still too much?
Mohammed Siraj and Travis Head's on-field banter sparks debate on sledging in cricket, highlighting the fine line between aggression and sportsmanship.
As they watched Mohammed Siraj and Travis Head have a go at each other during the Adelaide Test, there must have been more than a few chuckles in the commentary boxes at the stadium. We could’ve imagined it but it wouldn’t exactly have been out of character for the send-off and the retort were little more than child’s play to them.
After all, to many around the world, Australians getting outraged by sledging is probably an all-time classic joke; the kind that never stops being funny. They would have chuckled too.
It has taken time and a lot of incidents for the Australians to earn such a reputation and to most players themselves, it doesn’t matter. But the crowd started booing Siraj — when he was bowling, when he was fielding, when he was standing at the boundary line. Even when he came out to bat on Sunday, the pacer was at the receiving end of the crowd’s booing and a few “Siraj is a w****r” chants.
This, though, pales in comparison to what the Aussies have dished out over the years. Few in India will forget the Javagal Srinath-Ricky Ponting confrontation in 1999.
It was the second day of the Boxing Day Test in 1999 and Srinath bowled a short ball to Ponting. The batter went for the pull but the ball flew off the top edge and into the helmet.
The Indian pacer walked over to check on Ponting’s well being but he was met with a response that shocked him. The Australian waved the bat at Srinath’s face and asked him to “go back and effing bowl”.
Former Australia skipper Ian Chappell, in the commentary box, attributed Ponting’s response to “a flash of anger that you get when you get hit”.
A few years later, in 2003, the Glenn McGrath-Ramnaresh Sarwan spat at Antigua had many talking about the ugly Australians. The Aussie pacer was desperately trying to turn the game his team’s way but Sarwan was having none of it. The confrontation turned ugly as Sarwan made a reference to McGrath’s then ailing wife. At the end of the game, though, Sarwan went across to McGrath, both apologised to each other, there were no hard feelings. What happened on the cricket field was left on the cricket field. They dealt with it like adults.
In 2013, then Australian skipper Michael Clarke showed that the “Ugly Australian” was alive and kicking when he sledged Jimmy Anderson during the first Test of the 2013 tour: “Face up then. Get ready for a broken f****n arm. Face up.”
“On the pitch it’s pretty much war, isn’t it?” said the England captain, Alastair Cook, when asked about Clarke’s remarks.
And this is just scratching the surface of this never-ending debate. But here’s the thing. Nobody turns up in a stadium to watch the players being good boys. You want them to be tough, you want them to have a go at each other and you want them to remember that it was just about winning a game. Nothing personal.
Siraj had dropped Head on 76 and had just been smashed for a six too. So when he got the left-hander, the emotional pacer let rip. Head responded too. India skipper Rohit Sharma didn’t see anything wrong with the incident though.
“Siraj likes to get into the battle; as simple as that. It gives him success and as a captain it’s my job to back that aggression. Obviously, there is a fine line between that we don’t want to cross anything that can bring disrepute to the game but obviously having a word or two with the opposition is not the bad thing and he likes it and that’s what gets him going. In the past we’ve seen so many cricketers who like that battle and Siraj is definitely one of them,” said Rohit. “Obviously, as a captain, it is also my responsibility to make sure that we don’t cross the line. But yeah, a word or two here and there, I don’t think makes a huge difference.”
On Saturday, Head didn’t want to make too much of it either but he did say: “I’d like to think in our team that we wouldn’t do that. That’s not how I’d like to play the game, and I feel like my teammates the same, and if I’d seen that in that circumstances, I’d probably call it out, which I did.”
Australia will take great satisfaction from the win in the second Test but is aggression really that bad? Here we have two players going hard at each, wearing their hearts on their sleeve and if they get a little emotional it should be fine. We don’t want robots playing each other, do we?
The umpires will step in if it is anything too extreme. That is what they are there for but this moment didn’t look half as dramatic as the local papers made it out to be. The numerous questions being asked in the press conference also eventually had Cummins saying: “Enough has been said about it.”
It can’t be fine when they were doing it and not fine when someone else does it. Just because they “don’t do it” anymore doesn’t meant mean everyone else needs to fall in line. Siraj and Head did have a chat during Day 3 and perhaps they would have issued some clarifications. Or, maybe, they were just adding more spice to a series that is just about starting to heat up.
The moral lessons, however, are a bit too much and it would be rather cool if Siraj can give them a send-off too. He certainly won’t be booed for that.
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