Dhoni Devastating Criticism Of Nasty Brett Lee

I should preface this by saying that this has nothing to do with the result of the game. Given how poor India's bowling has been and how indifferent their batsmen's footwork has been, I think Australia were allowed 50 runs too many (because of rank bad bowling mainly), and that even while chasing 200, India might still have struggled, regardless of what happened with Tendulkar.

But this is about cricket, not winning or losing. Cricket is about standards in my view.



M S Dhoni hit the nail on the head in his criticism of Brett Lee in his post match comments yesterday. His reference to Umpire Davis's clear warning to Vinay Kumar, that he shouldn't run across the pitch to back up a throw, brought the point home starkly. In Lee's case, he started out trying to field the ball, but then stopped, in my view, strategically in the path of the batsman. The Umpire did not warn Lee in the same way. Lee was not going to field the ball, even though he may have started out trying to field the ball.

If it was a new bowler with very little experience, I would have agreed that the bowler accidentally got in the non-striker's way. But this is Brett Lee were are talking about. A bowler with over 200 games of experience, a winner of 3 world cups, who has taken over 300 ODI and 300 Test wickets. He knows about as well as it can be known by an international cricket, the value of making the non-striker taken a longer route to the batting end (rather than the shortest route).

This again, has nothing to do with whether or not Tendulkar would have still be out. He may well have still be Out. But if he had been out without Brett Lee getting in his way, the discussion would have been about Gautam Gambhir's judgment of the single. Gambhir's tendency to go for runs in situations where only 2/3rds of a run is available as opposed to where only 3/4th of the run is available is well known. After one of India's major World Cup run chases in which Gambhir ran Yuvraj Singh out, Yuvraj commented - "I can't run like that".

There was another bit of sharp practice from Lee. The fast full toss has long been a widely used weapon in the fast bowler's armory. Bowlers with decent pace use it more lethally than ever before. Traditionally, since Waqar Younis popularized the idea that if a bowler tries for a yorker, it is better to err on the side of the low full toss than on the side of the half volley, the low full toss has been increasingly delivered out of choice. Some bowlers however, try to bowl a slightly higher full toss - not shin high, but hip high, at the body. Only the most cold blooded of batsmen can pick it early enough to hit it away square on the leg side off the middle of the bat. If it isn't middled, it usually goes for a catch.

But this higher full toss is a delivery that flirts with the fringes of the law. The reason the full toss above the waist has been disallowed, is because it is considered to challenge the batsman's physical well being. The full toss just below the waist - it could be argued that it happens by mistake, is perilously close to having the same effect.

This brings us back to the question of ethical action. Too often, in my view, discussions about what is right and wrong in cricket is focused on morality - people are trying to decide what is right or wrong in general. I think the idea of the "spirit of the game" is an ethical idea. It is an idea that is based on one basic question - "Do you think what you did is right?". Not whether it is "beneficial", or "legal", or "moral" (which amounts to asking, do you think what you did will be considered to be right by other people), but right.

How might one go about answering that? There are many ways to do so. One is to say, as the Australians (and increasingly members of every team at every level) do when it comes to walking, that its up to the Umpire to judge, I'm going to do what I think is necessary to win. Another is to ask oneself, like Dravid did recently in his explanation of the Bell controversy - would I think it was right if this happened to me.

Would Brett Lee or Shane Watson like it if they were run out the way Tendulkar was? I doubt it. Would they think it was fair? I doubt it.

What kind of ethical questions does Brett Lee ask himself?

Do you believe that a bowler like Lee, who has exemplary control, would bowl two, not one, but two high full tosses (one technically legal, the other not) in the same over, at the end of an ODI game when the result is not in reasonable doubt, by mistake?

Would Lee, who bowls every delivery in the book - yorkers, length balls, bouncers, outswingers, leg cutters, off cutters, with exemplary control most of the time, get two consecutive yorkers wrong by that distance?

Would Brett Lee, with all his experience, be unaware of the value of preventing the non-striker from running to the striker's end along the shortest possible route?

Everything Brett Lee did was perfectly legal. And he has claimed to be innocent, with a classical hypothetical - "I would never block Sachin", not "I didn't block him", but "I would never block him". A comment which comes with the unstated admonition - "How could you even think that I would do such a thing"

Dhoni is right. Umpire Davis had no business warning Vinay Kumar for running across the pitch as he did in the Brisbane ODI. But once Umpire Davis did so, Dhoni and India were not wrong to expect a similar standard to be upheld in the Sydney match. It wasn't.

It happens sometimes. Teams get the rough end of a couple of rulings. This may or may not impact the final result. India have won games before while being on the receiving end of a few bad decisions.

But the more interesting illustration in the game was that of Brett Lee's nastiness. His willingness to flirt with sharp practice is the signature behavior of what, in cricket is termed the nasty fast bowler - the sort of bowler who doesn't, reputedly want to get the batsman out, he wants to hound the batsman out, one way or the other.

Lee is a great ODI fast bowler. But he's also a nasty one. Nastiness, like bullying, only works against weaker opposition. India, in Australian conditions, are a weaker ODI side than Australia. Like bullying, nastiness can only exist if ethical questions are kept at bay. It is almost as though nastiness, like bullying, is a symptom of superiority. There in lies the promise of sport in my view - the idea that unlike in life, superiority could conceivably exist without nastiness.

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