Almanac Cricket: Vaseline and cricket

I learned early how to cheat in cricket.

 

At 12, I was a junior member of Oak Park’s under 14s.  Making up the numbers, I didn’t bowl all season and batted 10 or 11, depending on who else was making up the numbers.

 

At training, my bowling was treated with disdain.  Older kids lined up to bowl to me, either to get me out or decorate my thighs with another bruise.  My teammates taught me how brutal cricket can be, not my opponents.

 

Our coach, Ash, played for Oak Park’s senior cricket team.  In winter, he also played football for Oak Park.  Admired around the club, Ash was in his 20s.  He liked a drink and a smoke.  Most Saturday mornings he turned up hungover.  The kids waited outside his car to shout g’day Ash to exacerbate his headache.

 

Ash was a serious coach with hard eyes and an unhappy grimace.  He had a stutter made worse by tension.  Ash was moody most of the time.

 

Most of my teammates preferred mucking around than improving.  Cricket was a social outing.  They smoked, swore and barely listened to Ash.  The shame of it all was the latent talent.  One teammate is the father of a current AFL player.  Another teammate is related to one of the greatest players and coaches in AFL football.

 

Our bowlers had pace and aggression.  The batsmen had grit and sharp techniques.  That was at training.  During games, it was different.  After one galling loss, Ash took the team into the clubrooms.  There was no encouragement as he went slowly through the scorecard.  Chasing 60-odd, we’d collapsed horribly.  Ash read the scores, bewildered.  The angrier he got, the worse he stuttered.  One kid kept laughing.  Ash kicked him out of the room.  I remember being scared as his eyes hit mine.  ‘Wato, stop thinking you’re making up the numbers and try harder,’ he said.

 

I tried harder.  At training, Ash showed his class.  I was making up the numbers, but he encouraged me, adjusting my grip and footwork.  He told me to ignore my teammates if I dropped a catch or misfielded.

 

Two weeks later, I hit the winning runs, an edge over the slips.  As I walked off the field, my teammates cheered.  Ash was grinning.  He leaned down and spoke in my ear.  ‘You’re not making up the numbers anymore,’ he said.

 

In our last game before Christmas, Ash taught the team how to cheat.  Ball tampering.  On the morning of the match, I applied Vaseline to my lips.  Ash asked for the container, throwing it to one of our opening bowlers.  ‘Rub some under your arms,’ Ash said.  ‘Put it on the ball.  It’ll help it swing.’

 

The opening bowler, the father of a current AFL player, didn’t want to do it.

 

‘Everyone does it,’ Ash said.  ‘The senior team do it.  All teams do it.’  The opening bowler rubbed Vaseline under his arm and threw the container to the relative of a football legend who did as instructed.  Both complained about the stickiness.  It was obvious to me they weren’t interested in cheating.

 

Colourless and odourless, a thin smear of Vaseline can easily be hidden from prying eyes.  The bowlers did what Ash said.  Vaseline helped keep the shiny side shiny.  I remember picking the ball up near the boundary and seeing specks of dirt and a sliver of grass stuck to one side of the ball.

 

We won.  No one mentioned it after the game.  When cricket resumed in the New Year, I left the Vaseline at home and took a tube of zinc cream for my lips.  Ash didn’t ask for the Vaseline.  My teammates didn’t either.  Ball tampering lasted one game.  Everyone might’ve been doing it, but we never did it again.

 

Ash was a batsman, not a bowler.  He must’ve learned the Vaseline trick from a bowler.  It must’ve been happening at district level.  Ash made it sound like the Vaseline trick, though illegal, was accepted.

 

England bowler John Lever was the first cricketer accused of using Vaseline on a ball during a Test series against India in 1977.  Lever swung the old ball.  England were winning.  Vaseline was first made in 1872.  The first Test was played in 1877.  Oak Park under 14s, in 1982, put Vaseline and cricket together.  Maybe the association is as old as cricket.

 

All the ways to cheat…

 

How many ways can a cricketer cheat?  There are seven I can think off.  Cheating is claiming a catch knowing the ball bounced, claiming a runout or stumping knowing the batsman was in, claiming a catch knowing the batsman didn’t hit the ball, claiming the ball wasn’t passed the boundary when it was, not walking after being caught off the edge, match fixing and ball tampering.

 

Match fixing is the worst.  Few people fix matches.  The rest of the cheating is endemic.  As kids, we learn the spirit of the game.  Accept the umpire’s decision.  Cheat if it works.  Try if it doesn’t.  Everyone who has played cricket has cheated.

 

As kids, we learned ball tampering tricks.  Fingernails in the seam, tearing the leather when it scuffed, tugging on stitches.  I can honestly say, aside from the Vaseline incident, I never again engaged in ball tampering.  A new coach the next season told us to protect the cricket ball.  Disrespecting the ball is disrespecting the game.

 

Ball tampering – the outrage…

 

I love Test cricket more than any other form of the game.  One Day Cricket, T20, the Big Bash, IPL, I couldn’t care less.  Test Cricket is the pinnacle.  No other cricket is as tough or taxing.  Cricketers strive to make their name at Test level.  Since the seventies, the splendour of Test cricket has captivated me.  It still does.

 

It still will.

 

Australia’s captain, Steve Smith, cheated.  So did Cameron Bancroft and David Warner.  It was so clumsy, so ill-fated, it seems like a scene out of a B-grade comedy about a district cricket club down on their luck.  It seems made up.  Fiction.  It isn’t.

 

The outrage is fair.  But ball tampering has been going on since cricket was invented.  Notable cricketers have been sanctioned for ball tampering.  Michael Atherton used dirt.  Faf du Plessis used mints and his zip.  Vernon Philander used his fingernails.  Marcus Trescothick used mints.  Shahid Afridi used his teeth.  Rahul Dravid used mints.  Sarfraz Narwaz reportedly used a bottle cap.  Other Pakistan players allegedly used glue.  That’s what we know.  On it goes.

 

On goes the outrage.  Smith, Warner and Bancroft broke a nation’s heart when they broke the spirit of the game.  To put things into perspective, the calamitous attempt at altering the ball didn’t work, the umpires didn’t change the ball and the outcome of the game wasn’t altered.

 

That is irrelevant.  It was the intent.  To willingly cheat.

 

Cricketers have cheated for 141 years.  They will forever.  Competitive spirit and all that jazz.  Whatever.  Cheat how you like.

 

The problem for Smith, Warner and Bancroft isn’t that everyone else has tampered with a cricket ball at some point.  The problem for Smith, Warner and Bancroft is no Australian cricketer has previously been busted for it.

 

This is a first, and that is why the outrage remains.  Australia’s people have never had to deal with cheating like this.  We don’t know how to deal with it.  We don’t understand why we have to deal with it.  No one understands why.  Another problem Smith, Warner and Bancroft have is no one will ever understand why.  The match was already lost.

 

Why cheat?  Why destroy everything Test cricket stands for?  Why destroy a nation’s psyche?  Why try to ruin Test cricket?

 

Why why why?

 

I can’t remember being this disappointed about cricket since Trevor Chappell rolled a ball along the ground, because his brother and captain said so.

 

A year ban for Smith and Warner is harsh but fair.  Bancroft, with nine months, is lucky it wasn’t more.  Smith might play Test cricket again.  Warner and Bancroft might not be so lucky.

 

Will they want to play Test cricket again?  I hope so.

 

Australia is the only country to suspend players for ball tampering.  All other nations have adhered to ICC sanctions.  Atherton, Afridi, De Plessis, and everyone else who tampered with a ball are lucky.  Cricket Australia is the first to set the standard.  Where all other nations have ignored ball tampering, they must now adhere to the same standard.  The ICC must follow Australia’s example.  Stamp it out.

 

Change the rules.  Umpires inspect the ball after each over.  Only the bowler can shine the ball.  Players must empty their pockets in front of the umpires before entering the field.  Ban pockets.  Mints, chewy, and lollies are banned.  Set the rules.  Reset the spirit of the game.  Reset the spirit of a nation…

 

At the end of Oak Park’s season in 1982, Ash shook my hand and smiled.  ‘You could’ve played in the under 12s this year,’ he said.  ‘We needed you so I never told you.  I hope you learned something.’

 

I did.  I learned cricket is a hard game.  I learned to improve, despite making up the numbers.  I learned to cheat and didn’t like it.  My teammates didn’t either.  In cricket, we learn to cheat as kids.  We need to learn better.  Cheating makes the game harder.  It makes life harder.