Wild boys club

Cricketing history is filled with accounts of players misbehaving. Andrew Flintoff has joined this list spectacularly. Varun Zaiwalla looks back at some of cricket’s’ bad boys, and the consequences of their misbehaviour

Sex, drugs & Rock N’ Roll
As soon as news began breaking about Flintoff’s maritime exploits, most minds in cricket were immediately turned towards the man to whom he has been most often compared, in terms of his cricket. Botham did not disappoint either, defending Flintoff by pointing out that ‘different people express themselves in different ways.’

Giving the respectability of ‘self expression’ to an activity such as pedalo theft will serve Botham well. He was a regular fixture in the British tabloids due to his drinking and adulterous activity on numerous England tours.

Miss Barbados claimed that they had taken cocaine together when England toured the West Indies, and had such energetic sex that they broke a bed. This embarrassment pales when compared to an email he wrote to an Australian waitress that appeared in a tabloid. Beefy’s words seem to sum up his own idea of his life outside cricket:

‘Babe, you ain’t seen nothing yet. The mighty Beefy sword awaits…and that’s just for starters.’ Botham eventually publicly apologised to his wife and children, and the British public took him back to their hearts. They love a scallywag.

Mental blocks
Phil Tufnell is another Englishman never far from controversy, Tufnell’s life, like his slow left-arm bowling, suffered for indiscipline. His nickname was ‘The Cat’, for his habit of being found sleeping in the dressing room.

Despite his drowsiness, he has found time for two expulsions from school, three arrests, two divorces, admittance to a psychiatric institute and being hit in the face with a brick by a father-in-law. He was sanctioned many times on tour, mostly for drinking but also for smoking cannabis, allegedly while sitting in a restaurant in Christchurch. On the field he was fined for swearing at umpires and kicking his England cap around the field.

Violence
Like all sports in which grown men run around a field chasing ever higher adrenaline levels, cricket has seen its share of physical confrontation. Both Javed Miandad and Dennis Lillee, each highly respected and skillful cricketers, made their ignominious names during a test match in Perth in 1981. Reports differ about the origins of the misunderstanding between the two, but cameras record Lillee obstructing Miandad while running, and being pushed out of the way.

Lillee’s reaction was to kick the burly Pakistani in the back of the legs, who in turn showed his displeasure by advancing towards Lillee with is bat held above his head in the style of a sword wielding executioner. Lillee, the notorious hard man that he is, would refute the suggestion, but those who were there maintain that only the umpire’s swift intervention saved him.

Supporters have not been excluded from cricket’s violent outbursts either. Inzamam Ul Haq once famously waded into the crowd during a match against India to attack a fan who had been taunting him via a megaphone, and Shahid Afridi missed both of Pakistan’s disastrous first two matches at this World Cup, serving a ban for swinging his bat at a fan while walking back to the pavilion.

BooZe
A man often seen as a paragon of cricketing virtue, Sobers displayed great all-round skill and acts as a superb ambassador for the game.

The account he gives in his autobiography of a night out before a match against England provides an eye opening example of how much expectations of behaviour has changed. He writes of him and Clive Lloyd going out for a meal in London, and meeting a friend by chance.

Candid details of his visit to two night clubs follow, the drinks, the dancing, the ladies are all brought to life. Upon returning to his hotel after 4am, Sobers finally considered the game the next day, realising ‘if I go home to the hotel and go to bed, I’m not going to wake up.’ The solution was to continue drinking until dawn, before heading straight to the ground. He scored 150 that day, and his innings only ended when he retired, because, in his words, “I desperately needed the toilet.”

It seems nothing makes a sportsman  easier to forgive than a match winning performance, which explains partly why Sobers never faced the music. Genius will always be indulged of course, and anyone who believes that double standards exist for him and Flintoff must keep in mind the gap between their achievements.

Sledging
In the wake of comments made by both Sunil Gavaskar and Ricky Ponting in the build up to the World Cup, cricketers’ banter on the field in terms of, for want of a better word, politeness, has again come to be debated. The most famous example of this practice causing trouble came when Ramnaresh Sarwan made an unthinking reference to Glenn McGrath’s wife in response to McGrath’s comment about his relationship with Brian Lara.

McGrath’s wife was having treatment for cancer at the time and he reacted angrily, causing him to be disciplined. On a lighter note, cricket fans will long remember the fiery South Africa pacer Andre Nel taunting India’s Sreesanth with “Man just don’t swing at the ball, have the heart to hit the ball.” He responded by backing away and hitting the next delivery for a huge six over Nel’s head, before performing a remarkable dance in front of the chastened bowler.

Drugs
Recreational drinking is one thing, drug taking very much another. Shoaib Akhtar and Mohammad Asif found that out to their cost just before this World Cup. Failing tests for nandralone, both were banned for two years, and suspiciously reinstated by the PCB. More suspicion followed when they both reported injured ahead of the World Cup, where they would face independent dope tests.

Their insistence of their innocence, after having proved positive, echoes that of Shane Warne, who missed the World Cup in 1999 after testing positive for a drug he claims his mother gave him to help with his weight loss.