Ooh boy. World Cup gloves (and squash ball) have come off
Well hurrah for this. As if the recent World Cup and particularly its final was not farcical enough already, it has just taken a turn for the bizarre. After Australia won the World Cup final, not necessarily due to being a better side, but because they could just see in the dark, Adam Gilchrist, who scored a remarkable 149 off 102 balls, admitted to “using a squash ball”. Yep. Ball tampering at its finest - Adam Gilchrist had stuffed a regular squash ball in to one of his batting gloves which he admitted to giving him better control over his bat, by slightly raising his bottom hand off the handle.
Now, it all seems like a pretty remarkable thing to me. For starters, what on earth prompted him to try it? Well, we know for one thing that former Australian opener Micheal Slater used to do a very similar thing, albeit with only half a squash ball. So it’s not a new technique, despite there not being any wide-reaching knowledge of the trick. And the fact that it helped Gilchrist in such a way is both remarkable and unremarkable, that is, that he can score so freely with an alien object in his gloves is remarkable, but equally, he has always been known as a destructive batsman, who, on his day, can destroy even the finest bowling attacks, squash ball or otherwise, and so the manner in which he scored the runs is decidedly unremarkable.
The point of all this? Sri Lanka have decided to appeal to the ICC about the use of the squash ball, saying that it’s “not in the spirit of the game”. Wowzer. Never mind the fact that they lost the game, no, it’s certainly not sour grapes on their part. On the face of it, it certainly seems like a frivolous complaint, I mean, it was only a squash ball. But it does raise an interesting question. Where exactly is the line between “the rules” and “unfair advantage” ? In support of the “it was illegal” argument, had Gilchrist walked out there with a solar-powered mechanical “batting arm” then there would have been some complaints. But when bowlers use shoes with special modifications to help when dragging their feet through (Andy Caddick / Allan Donald style) then it’s OK. The other question, therefore, is if the squash ball had been engineered in to the design of the glove (and no doubt all the major manufacturers are queuing up to talk to Gilly for the rights to the next big gimmick innovation), then would it have been OK? The Sri Lankans would not even have known about the squash ball had Gilchrist not told everyone in the post-match interview. Surely had he kept it “secret”, then that would not have been in the spirit of things. And again, had it been Monty Panesar out there smacking the ball around like it was on a bungee rope, then you might have argued the squash ball had given an unfair advantage, but every International team has been on the receiving end of Gilchrist at some point, so it was hardly a surprise.
Rather than worrying about squash balls, seems to me like the Sri Lankans should be asking the ICC why on earth the match was allowed to conclude in near darkness.
Tags: adam-gilchrist, Australia, cricket, Its-a-Funny-Old-Game, its-just-not-cricket, rubbish, squash-ball, World-Cup-2007Related Stories
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