Devon Dick
The recent controversy involving umpires Darrel Hair's and Billy Doctrove's ruling that the Pakistani team had engaged in ball-tampering has serious implications.
Unfortunately, the focus has been on the pawns of the game. The umpires acted high-handedly. They could have given a warning and consulted the match referee and captains before arriving at a decision. However, it is unfair to blame Hair alone. Billy Doctrove was an umpire also. It is not fair to judge Hair for his past cricketing indiscretions in this episode.
However, the ICC should shoulder the blame for an unfair cricketing law. I was watching the Pakistan/
England match as it unfolded and the commentators, Nasser Hussein and Ian Botham, both former England captains, were horrified at the allegations and recognised the seriousness and said 'Inzi' behaved commendably. Botham said some captains would have walked off the ground.
How can umpires alone determine a serious allegation of cheating without producing the evidence and allowing the accused an opportunity for a defence before the ruling? That is not natural justice.
Cricket cheat
Cheating is a serious allegation. A cricket cheat ought to be treated as an athlete who takes drug(s). If a cricketer has been found to be gaining an unfair advantage, then he should be suspended for at least a year. However, this must be after due process akin to what the IAAF does. The umpire cannot be prosecutor, judge and jury. But that is cricket for you.
This episode over allegation of ball tampering has opened my eyes to realise what lies beyond cricket. CLR James has already written Beyond The Boundary. Cricket is instilling certain serious negative values. Cricket, through its law on ball- tampering is an instrument of injustice.
Cricket is also a mechanism to cause psychological damage. God has made human beings with emotions. However, cricket officials want the players to be unemotional, even while being victims of unfair decisions. Players must not engage in dissent on the field of play. Footballers and Asafa Powell can express disgust, but not cricketers who ought to be stoic.
And worse of all, cricket is used to enforce the principle of obedience at all cost. It is not surprising that the cricket boards act so authoritarian. As one cricket commentator said the WICB must show Stanford who has the 'power'. Players and fans must take it or leave it.
Obedience
Obedience at all cost is a philosophy inherent in the army and is necessary to engage in war. Even if a soldier believes that a war is unjustified, he or she must go. Surprisingly, Christians do not see anything wrong with a soldier giving unquestioned obedience, which rightly belongs only to God, to a chief of staff.
There is a book that is compulsory reading for students in an American university, entitled Obedience to Authority, in which the author, social scientist, Stanley Milgram, claimed that worldwide far more murders were committed by persons being obedient to an authority figure that by persons who were rebelling against constituted authority. Human beings have abrogated unquestioned obedience that is due to God and given it to human beings.
Since the cricket law is based on unnatural justice, and since the spirit of cricket could cause psychological damage to the players and its guiding principle is unquestioned obedience, I will be boycotting watching cricket and will not be attending the World Cup matches, including the finals.
This might not affect the coffers of the powers that be, but it is time to look beyond cricket and boycott in the interest of the game, players and society.
Rev. Devon Dick is pastor of Boulevard Baptist Church and author of 'Rebellion to Riot: the Church in Nation Building'.
