I got there mid-game and initially, it did feel that way. World cricket’s desperate need to tempt the Instagram generation meant that families were enjoying a picnic, kids got face-painting done, someone was in a rabbit suit, while the cricket carried on in the background, with quite a bit of the audience unsure of the rules. It was as if an English village fete had surrounded an international cricket match and hijacked it.
As the game was ambling along, with lots of drinking and cameras capturing children and mums shouting nonsense camouflaged as national support, suddenly, near a somewhat tight finish, Indian spinner Deepti Sharma ran out England‘s Charlie Dean at the non-striker’s end. India had won but a general gloom fell over Lord’s. As if a fun festive family day had been ruined by a middle-aged man running around naked, showing something nobody wanted to see.
Immediately, the environment turned patriotic, analytical, moralistic and divided. Like a men’s cricket game.
This kind of dismissal – named ‘Mankading because Vinoo Mankad was the first to do it in 1947 and now is immortalised as a ‘controversial dismissal’ regardless of whatever else he did in life – is touchy. Whenever done, those that it is done to, feel like it isn’t in the ‘spirit of the game’, whereas those that do it, throw the rule book and say it is in the rules – which it is.
Twitter, the home of civilised debate, erupted, treating the fun day everyone was having at Lord’s doing fake tattoos and eating samosa into some sort of post-colonial war. Anytime England and India enter into a cricket imbroglio, England tweeters say, ‘Well, if you want to win in this sham way and end the season with bitterness, then that’s on you’.
Indian tweeters respond with, ‘Don’t teach us the rules’. England respond: ‘There are rules and there’s fair-play’. India responds with, ‘You had the British Empire‘. And that’s a vantage point from which there is no further vantage point. It always ends on that precipice.
I’ve been watching cricket long enough to know that controversial endings can lead to a number of things in India – from the expected (verbal abuse at players) to the slightly less expected (setting a stadium on fire). This being England, the home of repressed emotions, fans, both English and Indian, left muttering to themselves, disgruntled but orderly, like an unsound hobo, unsure of who had wronged whom, but that some wrong had been done.
Comedian, BBC cricket statistician, radio star, and Indophile Andy Zaltzman’s view was that Mankading isn’t considered fair because no effort is deployed in taking a wicket. Whereas actor, writer, and Indian poker guru Mukul Chadda’s opinion was the rules clearly allow it, and the bowler followed the rules.
Naturally, both the respective countries’ press took their own sides. But perhaps the problem with Mankading is that it is fair and unfair at the same time, based on your moral worldview. For example, if you saw a sign that says, ‘Use disabled toilet when not occupied’ and you were fit and fine and did use it – if it wasn’t occupied — some people would find it perfectly apt. Others would frown upon it. The answer, perhaps, to life and cricket lies in what kind of toilet you want to be seen using.