Who gets to decide what is acceptable in cricket?

A disgraceful performance from a captain who got his sums wrong. It should never be permitted to happen again. One of the worst things I have ever seen done on a cricket field. Richie Benaud on the infamous underarm ball incident.

Cricket is not real life; it probably can’t tell us anything about real life, but it can be a nice distraction from reality. In the real world, a fair, universal way to live to follow is by applying the Golden Rule: treat others as you would like to be treated. Applying this rule to cricket simply does not work, especially as a common captaincy maxim is to do what the opposition would like you to do least. In real life, someone constantly doing what you would like least would not be nice in the slightest.

There are no absolute morals in cricket as it is just a sport where players should do what they can to win within the Laws. 

If the majority of the cricket fraternity finds an aspect of play unpalatable, such as an underarm delivery, then it falls on the Law makers, not the “Spirit of Cricket” to police it. After all, how is a player to know what is and what isn’t “cricket” without this being agreed beforehand? Even more difficulty is deciding whose morals to follow, which have to come from someone, somewhere not absolute universal rules.

The perfectly legal delivery heard around the world

Richie Benaud's angry reaction to the underarm delivery

When Greg instructed brother Trevor Chappell to bowl a perfectly legal underarm delivery to prevent New Zealand from having any possibility of hitting a six to tie the ODI at the MCG in 1981, the cricket world was seemingly united in uproar. Richie Benaud calmly claimed that it was "one of the worst things I have ever seen done on a cricket field" and even politicians got involved. Australia PM Malcolm Fraser captured the zeitgeist by claiming it went against "crickets traditions", while his New Zealand counterpart Robert Muldoon threw the worst possible insult at a "gentleman" by describing the incident as cowardly "yellow". 

Who decides what is acceptable in cricket? 

The underarm delivery may be unfair, but that’s irrelevant. It was legal at the time. It's certainly not cowardly. No moral judgement can be made on something within the Laws, so the most important part of Richie Benaud’s quote is “It should never be permitted to happen again.” Only Laws, not cricket’s unjustified self-belief in it being special, can police the game. Importantly, these Laws are explicit and agreed on by all, so play can be sanctioned by saying “you can’t do that as it is against the Laws” rather than simply by saying it is against the "traditions" of the game, which is entirely meaningless.

Possibly as a result of the MCC, rather than professional players, wrestling control of cricket’s Laws in the second half of the 19^th century, the gentlemanly ethos of playing the game in the right (amateur) spirit has become a backbone of cricket’s belief in its special status as a sport unlike any other.

Cricket's traditions admire fair play and friendly spirit, but also allow for players to throw a potentially lethal projectile at opponents' heads.

Cricket’s self-mythologising has led to the belief that some invisible guiding hand keeps cricket special by maintaining its traditions and all who take part in it should conform to this spirit. For example, you simply don’t Mankad as it’s not done. Similarly don’t do something legal like bowling underarm as that too is “not cricket”. Players seemingly accept, and are expected to accept, these baffling unwritten rules without question. However, these underlying traditions should be consistently questioned as it is unclear where they came from and to whose standards they conform.

What makes cricket special?

Cricket is not a special sport because of any spirit or traditions; it is special as a ludicrously complex game that somehow works, which attracts people for many reasons, from those who admire the players, the skills, or like the game's endless statistics.

Perhaps the worst aspect of unwritten rules in cricket is that they keep cricket as an exclusive sport. If you don’t know these unwritten rules because you come from a background outside of traditional cricket, then you’re expected to conform and accept these given absolutes, as no one else questions them. This can lead to people feeling like "outsiders" even more than they would normally.

Cricket is an incredibly fun game that should be as open and welcoming as possible. To make cricket special, it should worry less about its morality and concentrate more on being accepting of people from outside its traditional catchment area.