Column: Brian Turner

Cricket sledging a disgusting tactic

By BRIAN TURNER

New Zealand cricket has long been a peculiar, unpredictable creature. Worthy efforts one day, excellent performances occasionally, little to write home about often.

There have been an encouraging number of highs in more recent times and this would seem principally a result of two things - improved performance by a few players who are, after years of stuttering, starting to regularly perform at better-than-average international standard, and the drop in ability of a number of traditionally strong nations, England and the West Indies, for example. One might also argue that more regular international competition has also helped.

But there is, unfortunately, one aspect of our play which takes the gloss off our successes and which many cricket-lovers find distasteful.

Sledging, defined in the Shorter Oxford as heaping insults on opponents, a nasty tactic at which New Zealand ranks with the best, i.e. worst.

Sledging seems to be a part of what so many now refer to as a "passionate" approach to the game. We hear it everywhere, nowadays, and not just in sport. References to players having passion - in other words the right attitude.

It's driving me nuts, that word passion, and I hope others are beginning to question this simplistic all-purpose definition of the sort of conduct we require of our sportsfolk if they are to achieve the required results.

That is, to win.

For, as one dumbcluck I saw asserts - he was jogging wearing a T-shirt on which was printed the words "Second is first loser" - winning is all that counts, aye?

Well, it isn't. And in sport it never has been, nor in much else for that matter.

We seem to have forgotten that to come away from competition able to say that you have done your very best is a victory in itself. If you can say that, there is no shame in being second, third, fifteenth or wherever.

We seem to have forgotten, too, that all of us require others to take part - in races or in games - if we are to finish ahead of them, or score more points or goals and so come first.

I think we owe it to our opponents to treat them with gratitude and respect. At present we are hell-bent on treating our opponents as vile enemies. It's sick, contemptible.

So, let's go back to the loaded word, passion. Often it's used when what is meant is that someone or some team has played with considerable skill and commitment, with exuberance perhaps, or with great determination and discipline.

Let's seek to be more discerning, more precise about what it is we are seeing and seeking to describe.

Martin Crowe, for example, tells us he approves of the "verbals." It shows, he says, the right sort of "competitive streak."

Hogwash. What it means is that a player relishes trading insults, swears at his opponents with impunity, and thinks the end justifies the means.

He - Crowe - and the perpetrators often tell us how important it is to have fun while playing. What fun is there in playing against people who abuse the hell out of you as a matter of course? It's odd - rightly in my view - to emphasise to the young the need for fair play and good sportsmanship generally.

For the past two or three seasons I have watched with growing distaste the way in which a small group of New Zealand cricketers have been encouraged - certainly, emphatically not discouraged - to sledge the opposition. This is said to help give them an "edge" and is evidence of a commendable attacking spirit. We are supposed, then, to applaud players for verbally abusing their opposition.

Some of our lot do it frequently. In England in 1999 our team was reported to have, sadly out-sledged the English. Before that, when the South Africans were here, one New Zealand medium-pacer was spoken to by the umpire after he had abused a South African batsman just about every ball for two or three overs. In India, we had bowlers abusing Indian batsmen and jostling them.

Now, in a recent test against the West Indies, one of the most regular of our culprits engaged in a protracted verbal assault on a West Indian batsman.

This sort of thing wouldn't happen unless the captain and the coach either approved of it or ignored it. It is disgusting, and it is not what new coach David Trist said he would permit when he took over from the babbly Australian who preceded him.

Now, I'm not saying other countries don't have their abominables. Clearly they do, but why do we? Can someone tell me how, as a player, you can justify making a habit of abusing your opposition?

I thought it was accepted by most competitors that opponents who engaged in abuse were not only demeaning themselves and their sport, but acknowledging that they were incapable of winning by fair means.

I'm not talking of the occasional slip of the tongue - in exasperation, annoyance and so on - I'm referring to the deliberate practice of verbal abuse. It stinks, and our players are the lesser for it. They also detract from otherwise good performances and bring our cricket into disrepute here and overseas.

Three at least of the higher-profile New Zealand players are noted for their sledging, for their yabber, their abuse of opponents. Most cricket-followers know who they are.

If ever there's an illustration of how sport reveals rather than builds character, they are it (horrible thought: on retirement they might well be employed by the Hillary Commission and end up as "role models" promoting "sport").

Some of this tripe is excused on the grounds, it is said, that we must allow players to "express" themselves, show their "personalities." Rubbish. They'd be far better off quashing that part of their so-called personalities and cultivating and developing more character.

Unfortunately, we're in a time when those who are modest, reticent and courteous are said to lack colour, passion. It isn't true now and it never has been. It's time to lead, to stop it.

* Brian Turner is a renowned poet and a member of one of New Zealand's premier sporting families.