da bet nacional： Increasing numbers of players, and officials, are disillusioned by the amount of verbal and physical violence in weekend games
da gbg bet： Phil Walker25-Aug-2016Maybe I’d had a bad week (I had). Maybe I was hungover. Maybe I’m emotionally fragile (no maybe about it). Or maybe it was simply this colourless corner of London’s greenbelt getting under my skin. Whatever. Out there at the crease, it felt more like I was kicking around the fag-end spillover of a provincial nightclub than a cricket match on a sunlit Saturday. And I felt it.We were winning the game. I was a few not-out. It wasn’t especially tense – they hadn’t got enough, and their failure to do so had left a sour taste in the air. Throughout the course of tea, their No. 4 whinged on loudly about his dismissal, which had clearly carried to second slip (I was at first). But this is second XI cricket, where a neutral umpire is a rare treat, and so there’s a vacuum. And, in effect, this bloke was filling it with slurs about an oppo player’s probity. But that’s OK, right? Because it’s all . “Oooooooh,” said mid-off as he skipped past me. “Can I have your number?”I didn’t give it to him.A few weeks later, in the same league, our opening batsman – an old-fashioned walker – played and missed at a young bowler, whose appeal was turned down by the onfield umpire, who himself had been batting just an hour ago. The bowler gave the usual histrionics – head in hands, turf-kicking, chuntering – and went back to his mark. Very next ball, big nick, and our man walks off. The bowler turns to the umpire and spews a volley of abuse. Our umpire, not unreasonably, tells him where to stick it. It then takes five men – including two of ours, both of whom ran on to the pitch – to restrain the bowler, who’d lost it completely, from kicking off there and then. Their captain was full of apologies, but the bowler, even at the end of play, remained unrepentant. In his eyes, it was all fair game.
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I’ve played cricket for most of my life. I love its spirit and I believe in it. I’m not about to pretend that it’s all cress sandwiches, ice and a slice, and clapping the batsman for managing to walk to the wicket. Most teams round our way have got a couple of bigmouths who can turn the whitest air blue, and spend large portions of their Saturday afternoons seeking to do precisely that. I know ours does. Hell, even my , “and the erosion of respect for authority in society as a whole. But the MCC, as guardian of the game’s spirit and laws, has to do something to arrest the quantifiable increases in physical violence on the field.”All Out CricketThere are obvious procedural problems here. What would have happened in our game, say, if our non-independent umpire had attempted to send off the very bowler who was giving him verbals? And should he, as a stand-in doing his 10-over stint, even be allowed to do so? As ever, the captains must show the way. The hope is that having a deterrent in place would safeguard against it kicking off at all. “I’m a 22-year-old skipper,” says Mann, “and I play cricket with my mates. But if one of my lads is completely out of order on the field, then I’d happily send him off. The integrity of the game is far more important than potentially losing out on a pint from a teammate on a Saturday night.”Cricket’s always reflected the times. I get that. It’s unrealistic to hope that the game be an island. But those stolen Saturdays spent running after cricket balls and praying for an early finish are precious, and perhaps more precious than ever. One reason for cricket’s enduring grandeur lies in the steaming piles of grimness off the field. So let’s not be reminded of it until Monday morning at least.