Fluctuations

I've been getting increasingly restless reading about the "spot-fixing" scandal surrounding the recent England v Pakistan Test at Lord's. Not because of the moral angle - though clearly (no matter how benign it sounds) taking money to do something in the middle of a top level sorting contest diminishes the whole thing a bit and - since millions of people derive pleasure from such sporting contests - must be stopped wherever possible. No, I'm getting tetchy because of the insistence of at least one commentator that the recent result should be scrubbed because it "wasn't proper cricket".

Perhaps my views are incompatible. I've already said that spot-fixing diminishes the contest and must be stopped - why don't I don't think the match result should be expunged?

It's as simple as this. The problem with this form of spot fixing is that any form of interference creates doubts and uncertainties that take a sheen from the pure pleasure of watching two sides do their utmost to win. It's very much a question of the viewing pleasure of the spectators and their personal reaction to it. My first problem with the expunging of the Test is that it would be suggesting that any game where there was a sniff of something dodgy going on becomes fundamentally pointless, and that is surely more, and not less, likely to persuade spectators that watching cricket is a waste of their time: a dangerous statement to make.

Secondly, I take issue with the fact that bowling 3 no balls in itself devalues the efforts of the honest players (or even the dishonest players) in the match.

Barney Ronay, in his Over-by-Over commentary on The Guardian website, stated:

"The whole performance becomes a mockery. and what if you get the batsman out and it's a planned no-ball?"

This doesn't make the whole performance a mockery. True, I can think of circumstances where it would: let's say a batsman is under the cosh and has faced a succession of dot balls. He's getting antsy and nervous and decides he is going to have a premeditated heave at the next ball bowled at him irrespective of what the delivery is. He misses, or slices in the air - it's a no ball. A genuine bit of sporting rivalry has been torpedoed by cheats.

But really that's about it. Ronay himself suggests "you don't just switch on and off like that, you can't try 100%, try 100%, try 100% and then - oh, quick no ball - then try 100% etc etc.*" Suggesting that an entire bowling performance is going to be affected by the fact that you have to remember to bowl a no-ball in the 36th over is a bold statement, but suggesting that at the same time should a batsman get out to the said no ball it would make a mockery of the whole test is to reverse the logic to fit into the argument. And it ignores what I shall call - despite my mathematical ignorance - the Chaos Theory of Cricket.

Batsmen play shots based on what is bowled that them (part of the "initial conditions" of the system that is any interplay between bowlers and batsmen), and a delivery is very specifically related to a number of factors, including from where it was bowled. The simple response should a batsman have been dismissed by one of these no-balls is that the chances of him having played the same shot to a legitimate delivery are negligible. Fluctuations in the angle and speed of the delivery means that he would almost certainly (doubt created merely by that example I give above) have a played a different shot.

He might still have got out, but would be no more likely to have done so than from any other ball bowled in the entire game. The margins of dismissal - thin edges, balls evading fielders, even the bails refusing to drop from the stumps when hit - are often so infinitesimally small that making broad comments like "that would have been a wicket had it not been a no ball" are a bit stupid. And I think that about legit no-balls too - the bowlers always hang their head and kick the turf, but they have no way of knowing if the same result would have been achieved had they changed a fundamental part of the mechanical composition of the delivery - where it was bowled from. An inch makes a difference. If it didn't we wouldn't have a no-ball rule in the first place.

So the only sensible thing to do is look at it this way: there were three planned points at which legitimate cricket ceased and corrupt silliness took over. That does take the sheen off the game, but it doesn't make it pointless. True, whatever had happened in those three balls would have made a difference if they somehow broke crucial pressure, or if the penalty/actual runs stemming from them skewed the final result. England won the game by an innings and 225 runs. I think you can safely say that it would have taken a lot more than three oversteps to make that a borderline result.

My third problem is that expunging the game punishes the wrong people. Stuart Broad is a bit of a dick sometimes, but the boy scored his maiden Test century in the game. His performance had nothing to do with any dodgy practice, and certainly should count as an achievement even if Pakistan were 5% off their game because they were thinking about cheating. After all, Pakistan at 95% effective are still a fuck of a lot better than Zimbabwe - no one suggests canceling Matthew Hayden's (once) record breaking score on the basis that the oppo were embarrassingly poor.

That's enough. Get on with the game.

S.

* At one point Amir had taken 6 wickets for 29 runs. I'd hate to see him when he was concentrating.