Tags:
Journalism of Courage
Look at those Aussies. Butter just won8217;t melt in their mouths, will it? Neither will jelly beans, Rahul Dravid and friends may be inclined to clarify. Dravid, on his part, will probably banish the candies from his confectionary options. Never has a little jelly baby created such a storm. Ever since match referee Clive Lloyd got rivetted by television replays of the ODI at Brisbane that showed the Indian vice-captain staining the cricket ball with a mixture of saliva and yellow goo, every person with even a fleeting association with the game has stood up to voice an opinion. The charge of ball tampering is wrong, say his colleagues and fans, it was an accident, he should not have been docked half his match fee. Cricket8217;s finest ambassador cannot be happy about having his record stained by this absurd charge, adds coach John Wright.
Lloyd is right in saying that he8217;s simply heeding clause 2.10 of the ICC8217;s code of conduct, that motivation figures nowhere in his censure. It8217;s only because of Dravid8217;s record that he8217;s been let off without any match suspension, he notes. Unlike, one supposes, Waqar Younis, Shoaib Akhtar and, oh dear, Sachin Tendulkar. But don8217;t even begin to imply that it could have happened to anybody. No, mate, it couldn8217;t have happened to the mighty Australians. Breaking the general agreement on Dravid8217;s innocence and noble intent, skipper Ricky Ponting says nobody8217;s going to see any of his team doing 8220;anything like that8221;. Maybe the Indian cricketers were simply conducting a little experiment to see what effect a varnishing of jelly would produce, he reckons.
