Only one team was playing with the spirit of the game, that’s all I can say, Anil Kumble chided the Australians for their unsportsmanlike behaviour in the 2008 Sydney test. Does it sound comparable when Ben Stokes asks, “Would I want to win a game in that manner?” following their Lord’s Test defeat to Australia in the 2023 Ashes series?

“The answer for me is no,” Stokes said, referring to the contentious stumping of Jonny Bairstow by Australian wicketkeeper Alex Carey. In most sports, if a player violates a rule, a penalty is assessed in accordance with the regulation, and play continues. Simple. Cricket, on the other hand, is different. It’s possibly the only sport where playing even within the rules can get you labelled a “cheat”! The term “It’s not cricket” refers to unsportsmanlike conduct in sports, in business, or in life in general. If an action is not fair, honest, or moral, it’s considered “not cricket,” according to the Cambridge Dictionary.

A game seldom achieves such a moral high point. However, it was because of a deepseated class divide that cricket originated. Early English cricket was played with a competitive attitude but in a fair and honest manner by the affluent class, who were seen as upholding the virtues of a “Gentleman.” Class barriers, however, were eventually broken by cricket. Professional cricketers (Players) in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries who typically came from working-class origins and made a living playing cricket.

The Gentlemen supposedly made nothing out of playing beyond their expenses. However, the majority of cricket players today play professionally. The phrase “Spirit of Cricket” became well-known in the late 1990s. When the MCC Laws of Cricket were revised in the 2000s, a preamble was added: “Cricket owes much of its appeal and enjoyment to the fact that it should be played not only according to the Laws but also within the Spirit of Cricket.

The major responsibility for ensuring fair play rests with the captains, but extends to all players, match officials, and especially in junior cricket, teachers, coaches and parents.” Thus, it may be argued that the “spirit” extends beyond the horizon of the game’s laws, sometimes in conflict with the laws, which remain a bit shadowy. Back to Bairstow’s controversial dismissal at Lord’s. “Same old Aussies, always cheating!” Chants were particularly painful for a cricketing nation still reeling from the sandpaper-gate controversy. But in this particular circumstance, there is no legal dispute.

Carey successfully stumped English batsman Bairstow after he had erroneously walked out of his crease believing the ball to be “dead,” which was not the case according to the laws of the game. Simple. But the spectre of gamemanship haunts, and it has once again triggered “the spirit of cricket” debate. Many people immediately drew attention to the fact that Bairstow had attempted a similar stumping of Marnus Labuschagne the day prior and had indeed removed Colin de Grandhomme similarly in a 2022 Test. Plenty of other incidents involving other players exist.

Cricket writer Dan Liebke observed: “Always very interesting to me how the spirit of cricket seems to revolve around England batters being allowed to bat on even when they’re out.” Well, WG Grace, the much-glorified father of cricket, tended to cheat when the mood seized him. England captain Douglas Jardine’s use of Harold Larwood to employ the “Bodyline” attack against the Australians in 1932-33, particularly to stop Don Bradman from plundering runs, got a place in cricket’s folklore.

Jeff Thomson talked about seeing a batsman’s blood on the wicket. There are countless instances where the “spirit” of the game may have taken a significant hit, including Dennis Lillee versus Javed Miandad, Mike Gatting versus Shakoor Rana, Rashid Patel versus Raman Lamba, and the Monkeygate controversy involving Andrew Symonds and Harbhajan Singh. In addition, there are instances of sledging, doping, betting, bribery, spot-fixing, match-fixing, personal attacks, disputing with umpires, and abusing opposing players. It might be a side effect of the game’s increasing financial flow, for sure.

However, it would be unfair to single out the IPL or other wealthy leagues for blame. Meanwhile, Carey has been praised by Indian off-spinner Ravichandran Ashwin for having the presence of mind to stump Jonny Bairstow. Remember that Ashwin was on the receiving end when he “Mankaded” batters more than once? There’s simply nothing like a “Mankad” to start a discussion on “spirit”! In a Sydney Test match in 1947-1948, Vinoo Mankad ran out Bill Brown after reportedly warning him twice.

Undoubtedly, it wasn’t the first instance a batter had been dismissed in this way, but maybe quite unfairly, the mode of dismissal was attributed to Mankad. Deepti Sharma ran out Charlie Dean of England in a hard-fought women’s cricket ODI in September 2022 because Dean had backed up too much at the non-striker’s end. In fact, Dean left the non-striker’s crease 73 times before the ball was delivered, according to cricket journalist Peter Della Penna, who tallied them amid intense criticism of the dismissal method. Wasn’t that detrimental to the “spirit of the game,” one may wonder.

When the striker was a tail-ender, these headstarts grew steadily larger. So, “Mankading” might be a means to prevent the batter from acquiring an unfair advantage, as Ashwin or Deepti Sharma may perceive. There is also another side to the story. Mohammed Shami ran out Sri Lankan skipper Dasun Shanaka in an ODI this January for backing up too far. Rohit Sharma, the captain of India, withdrew the appeal nonetheless.

Sharma’s move inadvertently questions the bowler’s act and presumably sends a message to all bowlers that such behaviour is frowned upon even though it is lawful. Interesting stuff! In the 1987 World Cup, legendary Courtney Walsh refused to “Mankad” Pakistani tail-ender Saleem Jaffer, which cost the West Indies a berth in the semi-finals. But the peerless Walsh asserted that he would act similarly in a subsequent circumstance. Even in the final over of the historic Tied Test in Brisbane in 1960, Frank Worrell sternly instructed Wesley Hall not to attempt any bouncers to Australia’s tail-enders.

Worrell, certainly, was the first among those who donated blood to Indian captain Nari Contractor when he was hurt by a brutal Charlie Griffith beamer during a 1962 match against Barbados. Gundappa Viswanath recalled Bob Taylor, as he felt the England wicketkeeper was wrongly given out in the Golden Jubilee Test at Wankhede in 1980. In 2011, Indian captain MS Dhoni withdrew the appeal against Ian Bell despite being technically run out. And many more such examples are there. And admittedly, to some extent, technology has made it harder to be gentlemanly.

It eliminated the option for a batsman to decide to “walk” (give up his wicket) when he knows he is out, even if the umpire calls him not out. As a spectator, I’d love to see arguments about the “gentlemanship” and “spirit” of cricket continue to pop up. That’s where cricket is different! Romanticism around cricket possibly revolves around that axis. Whoever prevails in an Ashes match is irrelevant to me. I pondered what would have satisfied me at that point. I received a straightforward response: a triumph of “cricket.”

(The writer is Professor of Statistics, Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata.)