‘Cricket’s good name will be mud’

India batting great Sunil Gavaskar has called on cricket’s governing body, and coaches at junior level, to do more to prevent the sprea...

India batting great Sunil Gavaskar has called on cricket’s governing body, and coaches at junior level, to do more to prevent the spread of sledging in the modern game. The former opening batsman, who scored a record 34 centuries before ending his Test career against Pakistan in 1987, believes cricket’s good name “will be mud” if stronger action is not taken soon.

“In the modern world of commercialisation of the game and the advent of satellite television and the motto of winning at all costs, sportsmanship has gone for a six,” the 54-year-old Gavaskar said during a special lecture at Lord’s on Tuesday.

“With the game being marketed aggressively by TV, the rewards have become high, and rightly so, but it has to a great extent taken away from the spirit of the game, where bowlers applauded a good shot and batsmen acknowledged with a nod a good delivery from a bowler who beat them.

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“Today, although there is a code of conduct, the verbal bouncers go on pretty much unchecked and, unless something is done quickly done about it, the good name of the game that we all know will be mud.

“Just look at any school games anywhere in the world and we will see bowlers having a go at the batsman. They see it on TV from their heroes and believe that it is a part of the game, and so indulge in it.

“It is crucial for the coaches to step in and tell them, while the kids are at an impressionable age, that this is wrong and cricket has been played for years without indulging in personal abuse.”

Gavaskar, the second most prolific runmaker in Test history with a career aggregate of 10,122 from 125 matches, added that greater protection should be given to players who were subjected to on-field abuse.

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“If a player even so much as glares at the umpire or stays a micro-second longer at the crease after being given out, he is hauled up and in trouble,” he said while giving the (Colin) Cowdrey lecture for 2003 at Lord’s — the home of cricket.

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