Rule of Law trampled on for 'spirit of the game'
James Lawton, writing in the Independent , says by commuting Bell’s sentence, India saved Trent Bridge from bitter scenes of recrimination, but laws are not there to be pushed aside when it suits the prejudices of any particular audience.
Nikita Bastian
25-Feb-2013
James Lawton, writing in the Independent, says by commuting Bell’s sentence, India saved Trent Bridge from bitter scenes of recrimination, but laws are not there to be pushed aside when it suits the prejudices of any particular audience.
He [Bell] left his ground when play was still alive. He was run out, not sneakily, iniquitously or any other way that would have justified the bear-pit booing which greeted the umpires and Indian team when they returned to the field while the Trent Bridge crowd still believed that Bell's innings was over.
What really was the basis of the appeal to Dhoni by Strauss and Flower? Was it that there had been a miscarriage of justice? No, that couldn't be so because the Indians and the umpires had all behaved impeccably. They had followed the laws of the game, quite simply ... The truth is that when cricket was asked a basic question yesterday it blinked in an entirely unsatisfactory way.
Bell made a mistake, writes Geoffrey Boycott in the Daily Telegraph. He had nobody to blame but himself but India did a good thing for cricket.
The incident should have been avoided. Bell made a careless and stupid mistake. Don’t blame the umpires for carrying out the laws of the game.
Don’t blame the fielder who stopped the ball, fell over the boundary, picked up the ball and threw it in not sure if it was four or not. And don’t blame India for running him out. He was miles out of his crease and out of order marching off for tea.
In the same newspaper, Steve James writes that a similar incident would not have occurred with the other Warwickshire batsman in the England side. Of that you can be certain. Jonathan Trott would not have been run out, as Ian Bell was on Sunday. Bell is, however, very different from Trott. He is of the modern breed of batsmen who seem to go walkabout a lot more often.
Back to the Independent where Angus Fraser writes that Dhoni's decision to recall Bell wasn't weak; he did the right thing as winning at all costs is not cricket.
An editorial in the Indian Express states that Dhoni's decision to recall Bell was simply the easy way out. It is more than about what it takes to be number one; it is about treating each moment, each decision, with the respect that competitiveness deserves.
Yet the lesson that India began learning 10 years ago, when Sourav Ganguly broke decisively from the nice-guy archetype that had dogged the national team for decades and stared down opponents, seems to have been worryingly forgotten of late. Instead, another pattern is discernible: a casualness, a desire to cement popularity rather than competitiveness, and even a natural inclination to stand apart from the rest.
In its editorial, the Telegraph states that there is no disputing the fact that Bell was out - nothing in the spirit and the letter of the law had been violated. But with his recall everyone, including the umpires, broke the law which says a batsman can be recalled only while he is still within the playing arena. It is difficult to comprehend what spirit was being upheld.
Brendon Gallagher in the Daily Telegraph looks at instances in other sports when the need and desire to do right outweighed the urge to win at all costs.
Nikita Bastian is a sub-editor at ESPNcricinfo