In The Name of Competitive Crick
16-08-2007

It is indeed very good to see Indian Cricket team win an overseas test match. As a lot of people have pointed out, it has been an excellent team work lead from the front by Zaheer Khan in bowling category and the Indian batsmen putting up good show. In recent times, it is been very common in International cricket to see the players sledging.

It is up to the guess of the spectators what exactly they say but the visuals are certainly not pleasing. The recent test match that concluded between India and England just reiterated what I say a "sorry state". The conduct of players of both the sides were far (very far) from decency level. Whether it is the jelly bean episode or Sreeshant's brushing on to Michael Vaughan episode and other innumerable such things in the match left at least me with bad memories of the match rather than good ones.

The big shots of cricket may keep saying that all these things are the outcome of the some aggressive cricket but very soon this kind of behavior will turn ugly as people have witnessed so often between players in the football arena. These "acts of aggression" on the part of the players spills over to the spectators as well. More often, these aggressions turn violent when it comes to spectators (between fans of rival teams) which we have seen turns really ugly.

We have seen such things happening in basketball as well. More severe is the case when it comes to Ice Hockey where the players simply fight like street dogs. When some bunch of spectators was calling Inzamam Ul Haq "Potato" while he was playing a match in Canada, he went to the stands to hit the spectator. Navjot Singh Siddu had gone brandishing the bat targeting a Pakistani player some years back due to some taunts he received.

In the recently concluded match similar thing happened with Zaheer Khan as well. Australians as a team are indeed World Champions in foul mouthing as well. The players have to realize that competition is about the cricketing talents and not anything else. Moreover these players have even more responsibility because they are looked upon by younger generations as role models. They have to show more responsibility when it comes to their conduct on field (If not of the field) and set examples.

The views expressed here are those of the writer and not necessarily of expressindia.com
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