From: andyc@is.morgan.com (Andrew Coad)
Subject: New York Times article
Organization: Morgan Stanley - IS
Date: Tue, 15 Sep 1992 17:30:21 GMT

The following article appeared in the Sunday edition of The New York Times on
page 3, Sunday September 13th, 1992. Cricket articles in US papers, especially
ones such as NYT are extremely rare. It is therefore both interesting and
disappointing that an article, whose main theme is controversy, should be so
prominently displayed. Readers who may wish a permanent copy can mail me
with their address; I will gladly send a photocopy. Previous attempts to fax
the article out were not very successful due to the slowness of the fax and
the large number of requests for a copy. The article also appeared with a photo
of Salim Malik restraining Ajib Javed after, I assume, the sweater incident in
June.

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CRICKET'S HOT SUMMER: WHERE ARE THE GENTLEMEN?
-----------------------------------------------------------
by William E. Schmidt, Special to the New York Times

From the start, it just didn't seem cricket: rowdy fans invading the pitch and
battling with security guards, and later, hat-throwing temper tantrums by
Pakistani players convinced that the local umpires were favouring the English
side.

But the summerlong series of matches here between England and Pakistan did not
really reach critical mass here until twp weeks ago, when the final meeting of
the summer exploded in a burst of sensational newspaper headlines. "How Pakistan
Cheat at Cricket", read the Daily Mirror. "Cheat!" declared its tabloid rival
The Sun.

In an unexpected broadside, a top English batter had accused Pakistan's two best
bowlers of tampering with the ball, a bit of black magic that enables them to
supposedly throw cricket's equivalent of baseball's "spitter". The Pakistani's
fired back last week with a lawsuit for libel, and suggested that the Britons
were sore losers and, worse yet, racists.

For a game that has become, over the centuries, a kind of symbol for the British
spirit of fair play, civilised behaviour and good sportsmanship, England and
cricket have both seen better seasons than the summer of '92.

"It's been a terrible pity, really", said Michael Dunning, a former captain of
the cricketing eleven at Eton College. "The Pakistanis were just out of control,
really over the top all summer long. And frankly, the English players have 
niggled the situation too. It should have been just good cricket."

It was intended to have been the sports event of the year in Britain, pitting 
the Pakistani national team, the winners of last year's World Cup, against the
English, the runners up, in a glorious summerlong series. But instead it all
unfolded like bad public theater, provoking teeth gnashing and wailing over the
decline not only of cricket etiquette and manners, but also of the very British
set of values that the game represents.

In a long reprise in the Daily Telegraph, Cristopher Martin-Jenkins, the
newspaper's cricket writer, worried that such boorish and ill-tempered behaviour
imperiled the very future of the sport. "Potential sponsors wishing to link
their name to a game renowned for its chivalry might turn elsewhere, and the
amateur game, which apes the professionals, would get the wrong messages once
more," he wrote.

Predictably, the English blamed the Pakistanis for the trouble. "They don't say
sorry willingly and they don't often accept they are in the wrong," said Bob
Willis, the former captain of England. And just as predictably, the Pakistanis
 - who won the overall summer series - fumed over what they regarded as a kind
of 19th-century imperial indignation, as if the British were really arguing that
the only way a former colonial side could beat them was by cheating.

Waqar Younis and Wasim Akram, the two bowlers who sued for libel, said they
could not fathom the motives of Allan Lamb, the English player who was suspended
and fined for publicly accusing them of doctoring the ball. "But we hope they 
are nothing so base as money or even worse, our nationality," they said.

---------------------
"Malice and Bigotry"
---------------------
Even the Humanyn Khan, Pakistan's High Commissioner, or chief representative in
London, entered the fray, writing a letter to a London newspaper denouncing an
article last summer that described the Pakistan team as "the pariahs of cricket"
"The malice and bigotry of which the article reeks must surely be offensive to 
all lovers of the game," he wrote.

In a way, all this fume and fury came at a tough time for cricket tradition-
alists who have already been forced to endure another debate over the summer
about whether it is time to augment the eyes of umpires with various electronic
devices, including instant replay, to insure more accurate fair calls.

Like baseball, cricket is played with a ball and bat (a flat sided bat) on a
large open field, called a pitch, between two teams that take turns at batting
and fielding. The team that scores the most runs wins. Unlie baseball, the
action centers on just two wickets, rather than four bases, and the bowler, or
pitcher, delivers the ball stiff-armed, with the ball usually bouncing before
it gets to the batsman.

Like baseball umpires, cricket umpires must make instant decisions under diff-
icult circumstances. For example, batters often dispute that they touched the
ball with the bat after they are called out after the ball is cought behind
them by a fielder.

The idea of, say, wiring the bat to signal electronically whether contact was
made - a proposal now being discussed - is enough to make traditionalists
blanch, despite growing complaints that umpires do blow calls.

"Poor old cricket, like Britain's economic and industrial life, even falls
foul of its own efforts to improve," The Sunday times wrote this summer,
reflecting on the endless debate.

-------------------------
THERE'S ALWAYS TIME FOR TEA
-------------------------
Part of the problem is that many of cricket's most enthusiastic supporters
regard the game as if it were frozen in time, suspended in a kind of Edwardian
panorama of vigorous, fair-haired young men in crisp white linens, moving
gracefully over mowed village pitches surrounded by politely appreciative
audiences that even now turn up dressed in Panama hats and sports jackets and
ties. The matches sometimes go on for days, and play always stops in mid-
afternoon for tea.

That image is still not too far from reality, particularly in the county and
village circuits, where cricket endures as a popular weekend diversion. But
increasingly at the international level cricket has become something of a 
blood sport, performed by highly paid athletes before rambunctious crowds whose
nationalistic passions sometimes get the better of them.

It was bad enough, purists say, that the teams in last year's World Cup were
outfitted in baseball-style pastel uniforms, a marketing innovation that
British critics ridicule as "pajama cricket." But worse yet, some British fans
showed up stripped to the waist and garishly painted up in Union Jack colors,
aping a style more commonly associated with the crowds that fill soccer
stadiums.

------------------------------
THE HEART OF THE DISPUTE
------------------------------
Beyond the temper tantrums and arguments about etiquette, the heart of the
controversy between England and Pakistan involved the uncanny ability of
Pakistan's best bowlers to throw the ball past England's best batters.

What esle could explain it, the English muttered, except that Pakistan were
somehow altering the surface of the ball - picking at its seams or leather
cover with their fingernails - to affect its aerodynamics, much as a pitcher
might juice the movement of a baseball by sneaking a dollop of spit or hair
grease onto his fingers.

"None of this is new of course," said Stephen Levinson, a London lawyer and
member of the Marylebone Cricket Club, one of the oldest cricketing establish-
ments and the international governing body of the game. "There have always
been complaints that the game is not what it used to be. But a large part of
the furor is that you've got a side that is beating England, and frankly, a
lot of people don't like it."

Ther has been tension between England and Pakistan in the past. Two years ago
, in a series of matches in Pakistan, the English side became incensed over
what it said were "hometown" decisions by the Pakistani umpires. But with
England now getting ready to go to India for an autumn series some people are
praying, literally, for a return to cricketing peace.

In West Yorkshire, Geoffrey Peters, an Anglican vicar who was brought up in
Pakistan, implored his congregation - which is mostly of Asian heritage - to
ask God recently to help mend feelings between England and Pakistan. "We have
to live in harmony," Mr Peters said.




Phew! End of article.