We’ve been talking about this spirit of cricket thing for as long as I can remember. Every captain, when pushed into a corner, comes up with it. And yet, everybody, with no exception, violates one of the key clauses in the MCC’s spirit of cricket declaration which the ICC has adopted. Point 5 says it is against the spirit of the game to “indulge in cheating or any sharp practice, for instance:

(a) to appeal knowing that the batsman is not out.”

You probably see it twice every hour. In the Lord’s Test one of the Australian batsmen while swaying away missed the ball by at least eight inches and it clipped the helmet on the way. Straightaway Matt Prior went up, you’d expect that, but so did Andrew Strauss at slip. Now if there were two people on the ground who knew for certain it wasn’t an edge they were Prior and Strauss. Yet they were appealing vehemently for a catch and, by the sheer act of doing so, trying their best to induce an error from the umpire.

Ricky Ponting probably does it a couple of times a day himself and I’m not sure there is a player in world cricket who hasn’t appealed convincingly knowing the batsman wasn’t out. And yet at the end of the first Test, Ponting told the media “We came to play by the rules and the spirit of the game. It’s up to them to do what they want to do”. It staggers me. The spirit of the game is now merely a stick to beat people with and I’m afraid anyone who believes otherwise is being naive.

That is why you have to feel for the umpires who sometimes have players appealing like they are auditioning for a part and at others have journalists and commentators like us peering at replays and looking for evidence to hang them. That is also why I read Rudi Koertzen’s outburst with a touch of sympathy. Koertzen has had good days and bad days, like all of us do, but his explanation for his decisions on the two close catches at Lords was spot on. In one case, his colleague Billy Doctrove wasn’t sure if the ball carried and so they referred it to the third umpire; in the other Doctrove was certain the catch had been taken clean and so he had no choice but to go with his colleague’s judgement. That is what the law says. But Koertzen was roasted, you would have thought he’d just had dinner with Saddam and Osama.

It doesn’t help matters that the rules of the game allow the umpires to use the replay to judge whether or not a catch was taken clean. The television replay will never be able to give a convincing verdict for a close catch. I thought we were done with all that. Indian viewers will remember the uproar over the Ganguly catch in the Sydney test. The replays were inconclusive and so we could arrive at the conclusion that our emotions and the match situation wanted us to; just as it allowed the Australian supporters to take a contrary stand. It is a piece of legislation that is inherently flawed, going to the replay gives you the feeling you are going to a superior court of appeal but the judge there is ruling on insufficient evidence.

You cannot go down the other path and take a fielder’s word either. I’m afraid in sport, nobody’s word counts for much. Some cheat less than others but nobody passes the acid test: appealing when they know the batsman is not out. And that is why, while batsman are entitled to feel disappointed when a decision goes against them, we need to ask if they ever did an opposition batsman in by misleading an umpire.