Anyway, going back to the subject of “spoiling the spirit of the game”, as krish has pointed out the worse case scenario has been the under-arm delivery by Trevor Chappel in the 70′-which went unpunished! How can you punish thugs like Lillee, Ian Chappel,Lawson, Thompson, Hogg and the likes? You have to send them to a correctional facility! Can you remember Deniss Lillee kicking Javed Miandad’s (another thug!) butt in 82′ during a Test match in Australia?Anyway they seem to have learnt their lessons after so many years and grey hairs and they are considered respectable commentators now!

Even when the game of cricket was “true gentleman’s and Holier than thou’s” game in 1930s the infamous incident of “bodyline bowling” sent shock waves through the British Empire!

So, this is no big deal to write colmns about!

In my book the only gentleman who played for Sri Lanka in recent times was Marvan Attapatu! Sri Lanka cricket today is going the way Sri Lanka politics has gone. TO WIN by hook or by crook using any kind of Jilmart. Thankfully there are neutral umpires and neutral match referees to oversee the game. Just Imagine what would happen if the President appointed the umpires and match referees for every game played by Sri Lanka? Need I say more?

It isn’t. And it’s not because that statement is historically inaccurate: it has its roots in game’s genesis when it was only played by ‘gentlemen’, the aristocracy, and was used to give cricket an exclusivity that has slowly ebbed away. British colonialism ensured that that ridiculous adage would survive by replacing its classist motivations with a sense of moral superiority.

I maybe digressing from the current controversy, but I think our reaction – I use ‘our’ to mean the cricket media in India, Sri Lanka and Pakistan specifically – to supposed breaches of cricket’s spirit is coloured to by this legacy of misunderstanding and historical revisionism. The Randhiv-Sehwag incident is a classic case in point of just that and Professor Roberts’ article suffers from the same plight.

I am more disappointed in the letter itself rather than the mindset behind writing it. As a cricket buff I have a couple of prized books in my collection of Michael Robert’s writing on the subject, especially on Sri Lanka’s cricket history. Combining personal anecdotes with a sociologist’s attention to detail, his books overflow with insights that hint as to why we have embraced this game as completely as, say, Brazil has football.

His first point about Randhiv’s incident being no worse than sustained appealing opens a new can of worms in cricket’s troubled understanding of its own ‘spirit’. What about the practice of batsmen not walking when it is blatantly obvious that they are out? In my twenty years of being in love with this game, I have only known of one batsman who ‘walked’ when he knew he was out – and he was an Australian by the name of Adam Gilchrist.

Where does that leave the ones who don’t? Does Prof. Roberts expect them to be punished in the same manner as Randhiv has for his mistake? Cricket has, especially, in the last twenty years become a more batsman-friendly game – boundaries have become shorter, fast bowlers are restrained from bowling short-pitch deliveries, bats have become more powerful – and it would be a cruel, calculating, batsman-loving mind that would begrudge a bowler any advantage he can gain from gamesmanship as long as his actions are within the laws of the game.

Prof Roberts then points out that this great wrong of vociferous appealing has been committed by the Australians and South Africans. As a scientist, does Roberts have empirical evidence to prove this? If not, that statement is sadly nothing more than hearsay from the likes of rabid overtly nationalistic cricket fans.