should sledging be banned

Thank you, Fitzy97, for instigating this debate. I will assume that my opponent means sledging in the sense of abusing the opposition whilst playing cricket (I do not think that there is controversy about the tobogganing kind of sledging). However, in the event that my opponent did not mean the cricket kind of sledging, that is my opponent’s mistake and I am well within my rights to call the definition into question, seeing as the term was not defined before the debate. Definition: Sledging “Sledging is a term used in cricket to describe the practice whereby some players seek to gain an advantage by insulting or verbally intimidating the opposing player [1].” A1: The capacity for sledging to erupt into something quite serious Historically, there have been at least several instances wherein sledging has led to some serious problems. A recent example involves Michael Clarke and Jimmy Anderson, wherein before the test match, Mr Anderson called Mr Clarke “paranoid”. During the test match, another brief altercation inspired Mr Clarke to say “get ready for a broken f*cking arm”. Such crassness from the Australian captain (Clarke) lead to his captaincy being called into question, as well as the spirit in which the game is played [2]. All of this effort and energy spent on deciding whether Clarke’s threat is appropriate on a cricket field could have been avoided if Clarke had not have sledged. Another incident involved Andrew Symonds and Harbhajan Singh. This time, after repeated altercations with each other beforehand, the relationship between the two erupted after Mr Symonds was called a monkey by Mr Singh. Many cricketing boards were then involved in a series of processes required to determine whether Mr Singh was guilty of misconducted. Furthermore, even after Mr Singh was suspended due to being convicted, members of the Indian crowd still abused Mr Symonds by making monkey gestures as he went out to bat during a game. Since the incident, Mr Symonds struggled to maintain his career, obviously affected by this incident, and he was fired by Cricket Australia a year later. Clearly, all of these resources spent on the controversy and suspension were essentially caused by one rogue sledge [3]. The last of many examples I could give involved Glenn McGrath and Ramnaresh Sarwan. The initial exchange went like this [4]: McGrath: What does Brian Lara’s d*ck taste like? Sarwan: I don’t know. Ask your wife. McGrath shortly after erupted, pointing and threatening to hurt Sarwan if he said something like that again. Again, a sledge has caused a very serious incident. Conclusion: something as brief as a sledge has the capacity to erupt into a massive altercation, of which wastes a lot of time and resources. I invite you to vote against sledging due to its capacity to cause serious problems. A2: Psychological issues An in-depth study, performed by Yiannis Gabriel (1998), on the topic of insults found that, “[insult] causes powerful emotions and enters people’s persona histories” [8]. The associated feelings related to insult were “shame, guilt, and anger”. Why instil people with these negative feelings with sledging when it causes so much grief? As little as “uncivil behaviour” (“rudeness, derision etc.”) is enough to arouse problems within humans, as was found in the work of Caza and Cortina (2007): From Insult to Injury: Explaining the Impact of Incivility [7]. To quote the findings within their work, “employees [who could be cricketers] targeted wih uncivil behaviour experience greater job stress, lower job satisfaction, and psychological distress”. Now, enlarge “uncivil behaviour” to some of the following comments, or the above ones in my previous argument that involved threats of killing or maiming. The Sydney Morning Herald compiled a list of some of the worst [known] sledges in international cricket. Allow me to quote a few that I haven’t already [4] [5]: “What the f*ck are you looking at?” “Now David, are you going to get out now or am I going to have to bowl around the wicket and kill you?” “If you leave your crease I will break your f*cking head” “Ohh, I remember you from a couple years ago in Australia. You were sh*t then, you’re useless now” … (in response) “Yeah, that’s me and when I was there you were going out with that old, ugly sl*t and now I hear you’ve married her” Now, as evidence for the real effect of the psychological damage that sledging causes, a club game of cricket in New Zealand was abandoned due to “an intolerable level of personal abuse” [6]. To realise the full scope of this, the match was a grand final with the team whom abandoned the match in need of winning to help fund their cricketing facilities. Conclusion: Due to people being susceptible to insults (sledging), and due to the harm it can cause (as concluded in the many studies and news report I offered), sledging should be banned to save people this grief. Conclusion Sledging has negative psychological impact on people. This can often lead to serious incidences unfolding or people suffering from psychological problems. Therefore, sledging should be banned. Thank you for reading thus far =) References [1] http://en.wikipedia.org... [2] http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au... [3] http://www.abc.net.au... [4] http://www.smh.com.au... [5] http://ibnlive.in.com... [6] http://www.bbc.com... [7] http://www.lsa.umich.edu... [8] https://www.google.com.au...