The Australian cricket team has been accused of ‘cheating’ in the stumping of a batsman out of his crease. 

What is ‘cheating’? 

The dictionaries refer to fraud or deception.  That is not the case here. 

Where you are talking about conduct in a game played according to rules, ‘cheating’ means conduct by a player in breach of the rules that is intended to give the player an unfair advantage.  Well, that is certainly not the case here either.

But that description does apply to the conduct of the MCC members jostling and abusing opposition players with a view to putting them off their game and so conferring an unfair advantage on their own players.

Some care should be taken with calling people cheats in sport.  Players routinely test the rules to see what is allowed.  They also at times attract a penalty rather than let the game go on as it is.  Some sports are better at controlling this than others.  In some football games, you can see a penalty try awarded, or a penalty imposed for a ‘cynical’ abuse of the rules.  It is like the French legal concept of ‘abuse of right’.

People in cricket refer to ‘the spirit of the game.’  The notion, like ‘conduct unbecoming’, is in large part codified, but as difficult to define and apply as the notion of ‘unconscionable’ in our law of equity. 

And umpiring is hard enough as it is without asking umpires to rule on issues that the judges took centuries to refine.  And it is very difficult for any professional sport to keep a straight face about its ‘spirit’, when it thrives on gambling, which is so inimical to the community at large.  They are like pimps living off the earnings.

Well, the conduct of the members of the MCC was certainly against the spirit of the game.  As was the conduct of an English bowler who abused a century making Australian in terms that he could have picked up in the Scrubs.  He seemed to think, and he said, that this was an ‘Ashes test’ – as if that made the conduct acceptable.  I have not seen any reproof or penalty. 

And the target of the abuse was a Muslim player of colour.  Who also got targeted by the members.  To the point where he replied: ‘Stay civilised, guys.’  He was appalled by the behaviour of the better people.

But we now see that the spirit of the game can be invoked to save face for players who flirt with the rules.  In the first test, Moeen Ali was charged with using a spray on his hand that may have affected the ball.  But he was not penalised for tampering with the ball, but conduct contrary to the spirit of the game.  The press said that was the lesser charge.

When I looked at the Macquarie for ‘cheat’, my eye fell on ‘cheap shot’ – in sport, ‘an act of unsporting behaviour, often committed slyly and with the intention of injuring the opponent.’

In sport as in life generally, there are some things you cannot legislate for, or police.  The claims of unsporting conduct or conduct contrary to the spirit of the game are almost always made by the loser – and that conduct of itself is unsporting.

Two very clear recollections come back to me about playing cricket as a boy at Glen Iris State School.  One is that if you wanted to leave the crease as a batsman, you said ‘Wicket Leave.’  The other was that in cricket as in marbles, we were all intent on making the rules up we went.  To suit ourselves.

We have seen all that and more in the last few days, but the bullshit is in the realm that Immanuel Kant would have described as transcendental.

And it would be as well for the English to remember that the term ‘Ashes’ comes from a time when England’s losing to Australia was said to entail the death of English cricket.

Cricket – Bairstow – Ashes.