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ShareWhat was also interesting to see was the spirit in which the game was played. As you would expect from a team as competitive as Australia, the cricket was hard and unrelenting, and there was no shortage of aggression, particularly when Brett Lee was hurling his thunderbolts from that wonderfully fluid run-up of his.
Yet there seemed to be no acrimony in the verbal exchanges between the teams. For example when Irfan Pathan bowled one into the rib cage of Lee, he said with a mocking smile, "The WACA pitch is fast, isn't it?"
Later when it was his turn to bat and Lee's to bowl, Pathan got a real snorter. Lee didn't have a smile, mocking or otherwise, but more of a snarl. "So wise guy, the pitch is fast, isn't it?" he seemed to say.
These are the kind of exchanges which add spice to the action in the middle. As does this little sideshow: when Andrew Symonds got Anil Kumble out at a critical point in India's second innings, his celebrations, full of shouting and arms pumping, were way over the top.
Was it just coincidence when at a critical point in Australia's second innings, Kumble got Symonds out and the usually reserved Indian captain did three victory hops so completely out of character?
So you lose nothing in terms of competitiveness on the field or entertainment off it by taking verbal abuse and rude personal comment out of the game.
You continue to get gamesmanship, for that is part and parcel of the game, and you get smiles and snarls, wisecracking and jousting. But what you will not get is animosity and a bad taste in the mouth.
The amazing thing is that verbal abuse has been tolerated for so very long without any corrective action. Is there any redeeming feature to these three incidents of recent Tests?
Incident 1: Zimbabwe is playing the Australians. Eddo Brandes is playing and missing at Glenn McGrath. The frustrated bowler glares at the batsman and mutters, "Hey Brandes. Why are you so fat?" Quick as a flash Brandes says, "That's because every time I make love to your wife, she feeds me a biscuit."
Incident 2: Australia vs West Indies, captained by Brian Lara. The bowler, again, is McGrath, the batsman, Ramnaresh Sarwan. After a flurry of fours when Sarwan reaches the bowler's end, McGrath goes up to him and asks, "What does Lara's ass smell like?" Sarwan replies, "I don't know. Ask your wife."
Incident 3: The English batsman Graham Thorpe has been a thorn in the side of the Australians. He is also going through emotional trauma because his wife's affair has just come out in the open. Whenever Thorpe is taking guard, Mark Waugh at slip asks in a stage whisper, "So Graham, who is your wife sleeping with tonight?"
Now cricket is a non-contact sports, unlike football or hockey, ice-hockey or rugby, wrestling or boxing. In those you expect physicality and roughness, because it's in the very nature of the games. Yet the authorities try as best as they can to keep it under control, with very stringent punishment to the offenders in terms of on-field penalties, red cards, suspensions and the like.
Non-contact sports like tennis, badminton or table-tennis do not have this physicality, nor do they have any kind of sledging.
Are they less competitive than cricket? You only have to see a tennis match between two well-matched opponents to know how very hard-fought they are. Yet did even John McEnroe, in any of his temper tantrums, go and say anything rude to Bjorn Borg or Jimmy Connors?
You can see why "verbals" came into cricket. It's one of the few non-contact team games, so you are together with your mates, which gives opportunities for banter.
Plus the game has long gaps in the action after every ball so there's plenty of time too for it.
But banter is what it should be, and not abuse. The game doesn't suffer: it improves. See? India won.
