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Loading ...I don’t buy your argument here, Will. Just because something is difficult to monitor doesn’t mean that we should make it a free for all. Yes, it’s difficult to police, perhaps even impossible, but it should be called what it is: cheating. By labelling it in this way then most players will be averse to using mints to shine a ball, if only for the integrity of the game.
Suck it and see
By Will 2 years ago, at the end of August Add your comment below
The ICC are being uncomfortably sensible lately. The latest piece of common sense from Dubai surrounds Marcus Trescothick’s “revelation” that he and England used Murray Mints (surely the finest mintage) to help swing the ball during the 2005 Ashes.
“It was my job to keep the shine on the new ball for as long as possible with a bit of spit and a lot of polish,” he said in his autobiography Coming Back To Me. “And through trial and error I finally settled on the type of spit for the task at hand.
“It had been common knowledge in county cricket for some time that certain sweets produced saliva which, when applied to the ball for cleaning purposes, enabled it to keep its shine for longer and therefore its swing.” He found Murray Mints worked the best.
Of course, using artificial means of doctoring a cricket ball is illegal (think bottle tops, sand, a handful of gravel, etc), but the laws surrounding sweets are less clear. After all, it’s only affecting the saliva – and the ICC showed hitherto hidden powers of sense when they told the BBC: “It depends on the evidence and circumstances, so if something is brought to our attention it would be dealt with,” he said. “But where do you stop, for example, if you start to try to stop everyone who is chewing gum?”
Prezactly. This has been going on since WG Grace first wondered whether he should buy a razor. Moving on.
Tags: marcus-trescothick, murray mints, swing |
3 Responses to “Suck it and see”
August 25th, 2008 at 9.19 pm
August 25th, 2008 at 11.51 pm
I agree with Will.
We should encourage England to cheat by whatever means necessary. It’s the only way to get a passably interesting and competitive Ashes series.
August 27th, 2008 at 12.20 pm
[...] Suck it and see [...]
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