Slow to change, cricket must move with the changing trends

Cricket has traditionally been slow to change. Whereas other sports over the years have moved with the swiftly changing times and trends to be packaged more attractively, complete with a bit of razzmatazz, cricket has moved along at a leisurely, jog-trot pace. Only long after other sports had added a bit of colour to the clothing, had moved to playing at night and in indoor stadia, had opted for neutral referees, umpires and match officials and went in for a more innovative approach did cricket follow suit.

The introduction of match referees and a code of conduct came about because of the increasing boorish behaviour of the players. In recent times, there have been some steps taken like a cut in the match fees or suspension for a game or two but these have not really curbed the misbehaviour of the cricketers.

Of late, there have been calls in the game's circles for cricket to go the way of football and have yellow, green and red cards in a bid to come down heavily on erring players. The traditionalists of course dismissed this idea forthwith. The very thought of resorting to this mode of punishment seemed to be anathema to them. It mattered little to them that it was already in force in other sports. Cricket, with its ageless image of the gentleman's game - though in reality it is no more that - could not be sullied with such `medieval' forms of handing out punishment, according to them and they resisted the idea.

The thought of introducing these penalty cards into cricket - by which a player is given a warning for a first offence and then possibly sent out for a repeated offence - entered my mind again when I read that it had been introduced into the squeaky clean world of badminton. The main argument the purists put up in favour of not introducing the card system into the game was that cricket was not a body contact sport like football or hockey. Now badminton is an even less body contact sport than cricket. It is a sport where a shuttle, little more than the weight of a feather, is used, the players stay on either side of the net and the only possible time they make contact is when they shake hands after the match.

If badminton can introduce the penalty card system, one wonders why cricket can't or won't. One can only put it down to the game's reluctance to adapt to changing times and trends. For example, when the time had obviously come to introduce neutral umpires into the sport, the administrators chose to approach the task gingerly. The result was that one umpire was from a home country and the other was from a `neutral' country when the crying need was for two `neutral' umpires to stand on duty. That way at least the bias charge - which was the main contentious issue - would be totally removed and only allegations of incompetence - which will always be there - would remain. The situation, as it stands now is an uncomfortable compromise and this has been proved time and again.

One assumes it is only a matter of time before two neutral umpires stand in a Test match - a practice that should have been put into force in the first place. Going a step further, one supposes that day will also come when the penalty card system will be introduced into cricket belatedly. Why not move with the times and make it law now?