War of the words: Sledging Sunday Times

Sledging has always been part of cricket and always will be, but these days you must choose your words more carefully,

writes John Stern (from the Sunday Times)

The War Of The Worlds may be this summer’s blockbuster at cinema box offices, but it is the War of the Words that is likely to capture the nation’s sporting attention for the next two months. From a verbal perspective, Australia’s tour got off to a quiet start, but by the time Matthew Hayden was effing and blinding at Simon Jones on Tuesday, the Ashes sledging battle had begun.

And if the Test series is as tight as England and their supporters hope, then the Ashes could be one long sledge-fest. Forget Hawkeye and the Snickometer, Channel 4 should be hiring a lip-reader and registering the verbals on a swearometer. It can be no coincidence that the International Cricket Council (ICC) has appointed its chief match referee, Ranjan Madugalle, the former Sri Lanka captain, to oversee the Ashes.

After the ear-bashing Kevin Pietersen received in South Africa during the winter, he expected to cop a load of abuse when he first played against Australia. Yet at Arundel, against the PCA Masters in their tour opener, the Australians were strangely quiet. Again, in the Twenty20 international at the Rose Bowl, the expected onslaught did not occur. Interviewed during the game, Marcus Trescothick, the England opener, confirmed: “There’s not been much said — there’s plenty of time for that.”

Sure enough, the sledging kicked off in earnest at Bristol in the first NatWest Series encounter between England and Australia. When Andrew Strauss played on to Glenn McGrath, the bowler pumped his fist and shouted: “That’s the first one,” a reference to his stated desire to target Strauss. Later in England’s innings, Pietersen received his first mouthful of Aussie invective from Shane Watson. Pietersen responded in kind. It is rumoured that his sledge referred to Watson’s recent relationship with an Australian TV celebrity.

The atmosphere between the teams changed at Edgbaston. Jones, who was fined in Trinidad last year for giving Ramnaresh Sarwan, the West Indies batsman, a “send-off”, fielded the ball off his own bowling and threw it at the batsman’s stumps, hitting Hayden. The incident might have been insignificant in isolation, but England’s reaction ensured that it was not. Hayden’s style is that of a bully, both as a batsman and as a notorious sledger. It was no surprise that he returned fire at Jones with something along the lines of: “F****** hell, what the f*** was that?” What was interesting was the way that Paul Collingwood, fielding close in, entered the fray and gave Hayden a piece of his mind. Leave my mate alone, seemed to be the gist. Other England players leapt to Jones’s defence, too, which will have pleased Michael Vaughan, the captain, and Duncan Fletcher, the coach. In among all the tactical discussions will have been chat about standing up to the Australians. This incident was proof that the players have bought into that philosophy. Jones’s aggression and Collingwood’s in-yer-face attitude are not everybody’s cup of tea.

Vaughan, for example, is phlegmatic in almost everything he does. In the last Ashes series in 2002-03, he took on McGrath with bat rather than mouth. Shane Warne’s sledging is as artful as his bowling. He tends not to go for the expletive-filled rant, instead targeting players such as Mark Ramprakash and Daryll Cullinan, whom he believes to have suspect temperaments. This sort of sledging comes into the category of “mental disintegration”, the phrase coined by Steve Waugh. The Pietersen-Watson set-to is a more traditional slanging match, in which personal abuse is the common currency. Judging by appearances, it just about stayed within the bounds of good humour, although that is where the third type of sledging emerges.

Most people can laugh off the Merv Hughes/Jeff Thomson school of basic profanity, but senses of humour tend to get lost when the abuse becomes seriously personal. When McGrath and Sarwan squared up in Antigua two years ago, the atmosphere got nasty because McGrath thought Sarwan had mentioned McGrath’s wife, who had recently recovered from cancer. Many observers would claim that cricketers’ on-field behaviour is at a low ebb. Actually, at the highest level it seems better than it has been for years. At international level the game is so well-policed now that the routine abuse meted out by the Australians in the 1970s and 1980s is more rare, or at least is executed in a more subtle way.

Dave Richardson, the former South Africa wicketkeeper who is now the ICC’s cricket manager, does not have a problem with cricket-related sledging. “We encourage Test cricketers to play it hard,” he says. “Comments such as, ‘You’re not fit to play Test cricket’ are part of the game. But umpires have been asked to prick up their ears as soon as they hear the words, ‘You are a ******* ****’.” In 2002, the ICC amended its code of conduct to articulate for the first time the unacceptable levels of sledging. There are four levels of offence, ranging from language or gestures that are “obscene, offensive or insulting” to “language or gestures that seriously insults, offends, humiliates, intimidates, threatens, disparages or vilifies on the basis of race, religion, colour, descent or national or ethnic origin”. The punishments range from a reprimand to a ban, and potentially a life ban.

Players would have no issue with the punishments for racist language or its ilk. Where they may feel the code is too draconian or fussy is in penalising bad language. In reality, the lesser offences are rarely punished. England have aped Australia in almost every area of cricket on and off the field in the past decade in their quest for success. Getting tougher on the field is a significant policy shift that started under Nasser Hussain and has been embraced by Vaughan. Meanwhile, the Australians under Ricky Ponting claim they have tried to clean up their act. “There seemed to be a perception that the Aussies were ugly and wanted to win at all costs,” says Adam Gilchrist, the vice- captain. “It got to a point where it seemed people were looking for any opportunity to write about stuff like that. So we decided to try not to give people that opportunity. It didn’t come from Ricky. It was from all the players.”

But don’t get the idea that the Aussies have gone soft. If England continue to play the hard men, they may find that the traditional tables are turned, with Australia expressing righteous indignation and assuming the moral high ground. Ponting hinted at that after Edgbaston. Alternatively, the Australians may just fight fire with fire. It is interesting that three of the five Tests will be umpired by Rudi Koertzen, the South African who is also standing for all three NatWest Challenge one-dayers. Koertzen was officiating on Graeme Smith’s Test debut at Cape Town in March 2002 when he was subjected to a relentless tirade from Hayden. The umpire simply shrugged his shoulders.

The NatWest Challenge will be refereed by Roshan Mahanama, the Sri Lankan who said of sledging in his autobiography: “Such behaviour should not have a place in the game.” So England have been warned. If they want to dish it out, they will have to be man enough to take it. Telling tales to teacher is unlikely to earn them respect or the urn. John Stern is editor of The Wisden Cricketer magazine