DEGREES OF MALEVOLENCE

Quite extraordinary. The newspapers here in England are devoting double page spreads and acres of self-righteous columns to the events taking place in Australia, where the home cricket team are engaged in a Test series against India.

Now, to be fair, I should perhaps apologise for the fact that sport is once again the subject of my latest rant....but it has the effect of unleashing emotions that are sometimes hard to keep to oneself. So, please bear with me, dear reader, for all will be revealed if you read on.

There`s really no need for me to go into all the reasons for the escalating kerfuffle currently rocking the supposedly genteel world of international cricket - yes, I use the word genteel advisedly, because we now live in times when winning seems to be all, even at the expense of long held conventions. But the fact is that over the past 24 hours or so, the cricket tour has given rise to claim and counter claim of racial abuse, effigies being burned in the streets of Indian cities, respective team managements each defending their own and the ICC (who are supposed to be in charge) effectively sacking cricket`s most experienced umpire, Steve Bucknor - pictured above - for want of a more obvious scapegoat.

(Andrew Simons)

It`s easy to get caught up in the developing `politics` and the heightened tensions that now occupy cricket followers the world over, but perhaps a little more difficult to define the root cause of the problem. People have short memories, but you only have to go back to Day 1 of the Test match, when Andrew Simons of Australia quite clearly snicked a ball to the Indian wicket keeper and was most definitely `out.` However, Simons stood his ground, refused to accept his dismissal and compounded the felony by going on to score a big hundred, which was arguably the telling contribution of the game and the starting point for all that has followed.

There was a time in the distant past when the conventions of cricket - and, I imagine, most other pursuits in life - were respected without question and in the process led to individual self-respect as well as mutual respect between individual rivals and rival teams. Batsmen `walked.` People could sleep nights. So when did it all go wrong?

As an Englishman and a lover of the game, I live in constant awareness that the demise of such conventions can be traced back to the infamous `Bodyline` tour which the England team made to Australia in 1932-3, when determination to win at all costs by England captain DR Jardine brought about the kind of political crisis we are now seeing in the Australia-India series.

(Jardine)

History might well be repeating itself but, in all honesty, I cannot see that Simons` regretful refusal to accept his dismissal, the respective `sledging` by each team or the scapegoating of well-meaning umpires can in any way be compared with the quite deliberate abandonment of basic standards of behaviour and respect for the spirit of the game displayed by Jardine all those years ago.

At least in this current series, no-one has yet been carted off to hospital with a fractured skull, such as that suffered by Aussie batsman Bill Woodfull in 1932 as a direct consequence of Jardine`s tactics.

(Bill Woodfull falls)

So, before any more forests are decimated to provide the newsprint which continues to be covered over here with reports of events on the cricket fields of the antipodes, perhaps our army of reporters, commentators and opinion-formers should pause and reflect and be very wary of issuing condemnation. Just remember who cast the first stone.