9 May 2008
opinion
Johannesburg — THE International Cricket Council (ICC), charged with governing the game worldwide, doesn't often get it right, as far as I'm concerned.
It legislates where it needn't -- making bowlers face the umpire when they appeal, for instance. And it doesn't legislate whe n there is a crying need for it -- such as banning cricket contact with Zimbabwe while that country's government is trampling over human rights.
The ICC is forever failing to see the wood for the trees and involving itself in minutiae, instead of seeing the big picture.
Fortunately, it has neither infiltrated nor influenced the Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC), which is the guardian of the game's laws and regards those laws as sacrosanct.
To that end, the MCC this week made what I believe is one of the most visionary decisions in a long time -- to curb the cursed encroachment of technology in the sport.
In doing so, the MCC becomes one of the few bodies in world sport to make a positive move in the right direction.
Golf is grappling with the problem of new, high-powered equipment that threatens to render golf courses redundant, because they are too short.
Tennis is constantly changing with the new technology being introduced into racquets, making the game little more than a boring contest of who can bludgeon the hardest.
But the MCC, to its everlasting credit, has said enough is enough. Its members decreed this week that bats will be made of willow (for the blade), cane (for the handle) and rubber (shock absorbers in the handle, for want of a better description, and the grip) and twine (for the binding on the handle).
No more of this carbon fibre and titanium nonsense for them. John Stephenson, head of cricket at the MCC, alluded to the way technology was changing other sports and said the MCC did not want this game changed to the extent that it became loaded in favour of batsmen.
Hear, hear! With the advent of limited-overs international cricket, and the newer Twenty20 format, the game is already weighted heavily in favour of batsmen. Cricket pitches favouring batsmen , all sorts of rules about head-high deliveries, free hits and the like make bowlers' lives a nightmare .
Batsmen have virtually no boundaries, if you'll pardon the pun. They can't be given out lbw to a ball pitched outside leg, they receive the benefit of the doubt if the decision is marginal, and they have bats that hit sixes off the edge.
Players such as Barry Richards, who made his runs with big boundaries and a cane-willow-and-rubber bat , are upset about these hi-tech bats.
Richards once asked me at the Wanderers, "In what other sport have you seen the fields getting smaller, but technology helping to hit the ball further? The bats they use these days are devaluing the game".
He was right, of course. Make things this easy and the great accomplishments -- centuries, double-centuries -- no longer seem so great.
Speaking from a bowler's heart, I have said for years that cricket has been too heavily weighted in favour of batsmen .
When a pitch seams, bitching can be heard from Cape Town to Calcutta. When there is too much grass left on the pitch, the international sports wires groan under the column inches of complaints.
The MCC, in its infinite wisdom, is finally doing something to make life just a bit harder for all the overprotected batsmen.
It was interesting to note that the new laws passed with overwhelming (98,6%) support.
He has been appointed to the world cricket committee -- a gathering of thinkers and great names in the game -- who review the course cricket is taking and ponder its future.
Shaun Pollock, one of our best cricket ambassadors, can only add to the committee's gravitas, and we hope this is just the first step on his way to bigger things in the game he has graced for so long.
How about Polly for ICC president?
Smit is sports editor.
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