Will Keemo Paul keep regretting?

By Wisden India
There’s nothing like a Keemo Paul moment to set Twitter alight. A naked flame to a burgeoning cloud of combustible gases, all it took for the cricket world to go BOOM was a bowler whipping the bails off at the non-striker’s end to seal a tight game, Mankading the batsman, if you will. And this, in the Under-19 World Cup, in a match between Zimbabwe and West Indies, not the highest stakes game ever played.

At one end were the rationalists, correctly pointing out that the bowler was well within the laws of the game. That the batsmen was, at worst, trying to steal an unfair advantage by backing up, and, at best, tardy in not staying in his crease till the ball was delivered. At the other end were the romantics, reprising that agoold idiom: it’s just not cricket. Where was sportsmanship and courtesy and all those little niceties that we cling on to so dearly in order to differentiate the bat and ball game from other sport?

Cricket has done its best in the last few years to prove that it is no different from other sport in all that is undesirable. Power hungry administrators serving only themselves, corrupt players robbing fans of any remaining faith, greedy broadcasters squeezing every last paisa from the contest and a media that sells the game – either through blind acceptance or naked, unjustified criticism – and cricket is not spared any of the ills that dog all other sport.

But, what makes cricket unique, is its willingness to embrace and encourage shades of grey. In football, it’s not a goal unless the ball crosses the line; in cricket, a fielder may jump over the ropes and flick the ball from out to in and dive back to complete a catch. In tennis, Hawkeye will tell you whether a ball landed in or out; in cricket, Hawkeye will show you whether the ball was hitting the stumps or not and still it comes down to the umpire’s call.

It’s not a coincidence that cricket is ambiguous in its phrasing of laws. In fact, the very existence of a Preamble to the Laws, called the Spirit of Cricket, is proof of cricket’s innate uniqueness, and the unconscious urge of its practitioners to propagate this.

Was Keemo right in doing what he did? This is the kind of question cricket repeatedly throws up, with no definitive answers.

Like the draw, a result most other sport would not countenance, cricket doesn’t merely tolerate middle ground, it revels in it. Peel off the layers, and the argument simplifies itself. Retreat to a black or white implementation of the laws, and even the most furiously debated issue resolves itself. There has been no valid answer to the question of what exactly this Spirit of Cricket means.

Batsmen don’t walk when they know they’ve edged a ball to the keeper, bowlers appeal when they are sure a batsman is not out and fielders claim catches when they should reasonably be aware that the ball has kissed turf before reaching their hands. If all these acts are condoned – especially by former cricketers who have played the game at its most competitive levels – why the outrage over a teenager doing something many have done before and is well within the laws?

Sometimes, there are no good answers because the question being asked is the wrong one. Amid all the Twitter rage, in his quiet corner, Alan Butcher, former England bat and a cricket coach of many years and much wisdom, provided a clue in a series of nuanced and honest tweets: Do what you feel is right, and something doesn’t feel right about this.

Keemo Paul did what he felt was right in the heat of the moment, and to that end he deserves neither the criticism nor praise that’s coming his way. But, as many beery conversations with the three brothers Chappell over the years has taught me, playing by the rules and winning at all underarm costs is no insurance against a lifetime of regret.

To watch Brendon McCullum, in the last World Cup and beyond, live a cricket life day-in and day-out where being competitive did not mean being crass, where being professional did not exclude being human, warmed the cockles of the heart just as sipping a fine brandy beside a crackling fireplace on a cold winter night would.

When running in to bowl to try and win a game in the last over, the Spirit of Cricket might be as far from the mind as Christmastide on a July afternoon, and just as useless, but cricket, and our world, would be poorer without it.