Conduct unbecoming

There is no getting away from it: cricket is facing a crisis. The players (who, incidentally, want their union representatives to be recognised at the highest levels) are behaving in a way that is bringing the game into disrepute - not all the players all of the time but too many players far too often. Hardly a Test or one-day international goes by on any continent without some batsman or bowler, or both, being hauled before the match referee to account for his language or general conduct. And, as every sensible headmaster tells an errant schoolboy, we really cannot carry on like this.

In October we saw three players, Shoaib Akhtar, Graeme Smith and Andrew Hall, fined and banned for behaviour that Clive Lloyd, the ICC match referee, deemed unacceptable. Had other match referees been half as attentive in the past few years many others would have been punished even more severely. It is time for men like Lloyd to administer the code of conduct with as much rigour as their conscience allows. When cricket, of all games, becomes a slanging match, whether or not the slanging is of a racial nature, it is time to ban the offenders for as long as it takes them to mend their ways.

I am not being misty-eyed. Players have always said daft, occasionally offensive things to one another on the field, although they were usually more discreet about it. The modern bowler (and short-leg and slip) feels free to celebrate each wicket by pointing the departing batsman towards the pavilion with an earful, and it makes dismal viewing. One of the most wretched sights of last summer was that of unremarkable slow bowler Paul Adams showing Andrew Flintoff the way home after he had dismissed the batsman for 95. He had battered the South Africans into a pulp, only to be dispatched with a volley of abuse that made the abuser look small - or, in Adams's case, smaller.

Television has helped to concentrate minds on this matter. Knowing that they cannot escape the all-seeing eye and that everything they say is liable to be picked up and used in evidence against them, international cricketers might be expected to mind their Ps and Qs but not a bit of it. Some carry on like excitable teenagers, scalding and rebuking, cursing and goading, spitting and spatting. Their captains would do the game a favour if they reminded them that only by maintaining discipline will they make the most of their ability.

But who captains the captains? The most dispiriting aspect of the imbroglio in Pakistan was the involvement of Smith, who had proved such an assured leader during the English summer. It was no surprise to see Shoaib on the charge sheet. His game is based on mincing, posing and (camera, please, toss of curls, pout of lips) "I'm more sinned against than sinning" brooding. But Smith is moulded from different clay.

There is no point trying to excuse him on grounds of age since he has showed that he is mature beyond his years. Maybe it was just one of those things that can happen on the sub-continent but let us hope that this impressive young man, who described in graphic terms how the Australians treated him when he came into Test cricket, regains his equilibrium. South Africa's progress depends upon it. Already the Australians, chastened by public disapproval of lapses in their behaviour, have vowed to win back their spurs. Now the rest must put their house in order. What was Rikki Clarke up to, in his first Test, behaving like a village lout, and against the Bangladeshis, of all people? Such behaviour demeans him, makes the England side look cheap and defiles the game. It has nothing to do with passion, that most over-rated of traits. Rather it bears the mark of immaturity.

Crisis is not too strong a word. Part of cricket's enduring fascination (a large part) is based on its appeal to the more chivalrous, elevated instincts of its followers. This is not some tribal ritual, like football. Cricket has always rewarded steadiness of character, if not good behaviour, and a cricketer constantly in a bate is letting the game down. It does not look manly. It makes the bad-mouther look a chump.

This is not a call for a return to `old-fashioned' values, which were frequently honoured more in the breach than the observance. There were shockers in the past, just as there are upstanding men in the modern game. But we need to see more of them and we need to see (and hear) less of the roaring boys. This is too precious a game for the rotters to hold way. So come on, ICC, tell them straight: be good or be gone.