England were getting hammered in Australia in 2013-14. Brett Lee, the retired Australian fast bowler who hadn't bowled more than 4 overs in a match since the middle of 2012, took up Piers Morgan's bravado on social media and a battle ensued on the cricket pitch.
On call to report it, were two former Test captains, the greatest leg spinner of all time, and a successful county professional turned broadcaster. It made for great television during the break and going by the number of spectators lined up to watch the net, a fine spectacle at the stadium as well.
Cricket is a tough game played with a hard, heavy ball. It is a leisurely game played at blinding speed. It requires reflexes honed to a level that is beyond most of us. Sometimes even more than that. Fans laugh at bowlers who bowl at 85 miles per hour, but if the fans who come to watch games of cricket were to face up to bowling in the 80-85 range, there would be a large number of broken bones and worse. Even well-trained cricketers get hit by bowling at that pace if they don't pick up the length in time.
Cricket is not a suicidal game. It is a game of skill and high technique. When commentators in Tests talk about a batsman "lacking courage", not wanting to get in line against extremely quick bowling (say Mitchell Johnson, Shoaib Akhtar or Dale Steyn when he's in the mood) they are not saying the batsman lacks courage compared to you and me watching in our living rooms. They are speaking relative to the extremely high level of technical proficiency expected from a batsman at the international level.
The episode with Piers Morgan was just another example of these distinctions being blurred. Michael Vaughan telling Morgan to get in line. Shane Warne extolling Morgan's "courage" after the fact. What Morgan exhibited was not courage, he exhibited extremely poor judgment. For a choice to be courageous, there has to be something of consequence at stake. What Warne and Vaughan and Lee and Nicholas participated in was not lighthearted ratings gold, it was rank stupidity.
Commentators have a duty to the public. This duty is to be guardians of the game, to explain the game to the public. They do this reasonably well a lot of the time. Their experience of playing international sport certainly qualifies them to describe the game to us. Their enthusiastic participation in this deadly stunt, in which Morgan was unfit and hopelessly overmatched, should count against them when they are judged as commentators. It was a lapse in judgment which would have been more forgivable had it come from someone who never played at the first class level. From former Test players and a first class captain who captained Malcolm Marshall, a higher standard ought to be expected.
Greg Baum touched on Lee's bullying, Morgan's foolhardiness and the macabre cheering of nearly 2000 fans in an article today. He also discusses the way commentators describe extreme pace during a Test match. His example was that of Mitchell Johnson letting fly against England, and Michael Slater and others getting understandably excited. Finally, Baum also discusses fear and courage.
Baum is treading lightly. A central fact of the Piers Morgan - Brett Lee meeting - is that it was not an adhoc, off-the-cuff event. It was well organized, complete with multiple cameras, commentators and producers. It was the very antithesis of sport. It was all down to exactly one bottom line.
It is one thing to get excited when Mitchell Johnson's letting fly in a Test match with umpires officiating against batsmen who expect it and are equipped to face it. Its still dangerous, but at least it is sport. And it ought to be discussed as sport. Technical points ought to matter. Perhaps if technical points are discussed (as Ian Chappell or Sunil Gavaskar have done for years on TV), then the limits of technique might come up as well. Perhaps, if the sport is discussed as a sport, we won't have a range of opinions on whether or not "Prepare to have your arm broken" (As Michael Clarke famously advised James Anderson) is a legitimate comment on the field.
Fear of physical danger remains a legitimate part of cricket. Technical prowess to tame that fear is an equally (if not more) exhilarating aspect of the sport which is harder to observe and describe. Players do their best on the field. It is pure sport. Bat, ball and exquisite skill and immense character. On the field, it is a game of millimeters.
Phil Hughes, in a moment of indescribable tragedy, found himself in wrongest possible millimeter of all. The bowler, Sean Abbott, is all of 22. He was playing his 15th first class game and bowled 2nd change. It is a great achievement to play cricket at the first class level. Only a small minority of cricket players achieve this distinction. But despite every precaution, and despite the fact the Hughes is one of the best young batsmen in Australia, this could not be avoided.
I hope the geniuses at the Australian broadcaster who thought the lunch break television show of an incompetent amateur being bullied by a retired quick bowler paceman was a good idea lose some sleep over their decision. I hope those commentators also lose some sleep over their part in the show.
I hope the players on the field will calm down a bit too when it comes to threats about breaking teeth or break skulls or arms or ribs. Even if they know what they are doing, it takes but a moment for matters to escalate. Consider this over from Brett Lee to Mornantau Hayward and Makhaya Ntini, two rank tailenders.
Consider that Umpire Taufel was new at the time, umpiring a Test involving an all time great Australian side. We can see Umpire Taufel talking to Lee. We hear Greig and Chappell on commentary, first thinking its funny, then bringing up the law, and then finally, in Greig's case, giving Lee the old "you got hammered by an actual batsman earlier today, why are you bullying tailenders" spiel. At no point do the commentators seem capable of clearly stating the obvious fact - that what Lee was doing (as many other bowlers have done over the years, possibly also to Lee when he was batting) was stupid and far more importantly, outright dangerous. Not dangerous in the way a concerted three or four over barrage from Andrew Flintoff at his peak from round the wicket on an uneven 5th day pitch to Sachin Tendulkar might be dangerous, but dangerous in the "you idiot, you might kill the guy because he doesn't know how to bat" sense.
If commentators are not to show responsible perspective, then who is?
Greg Baum is right to tread lightly and examine our ideas of courage, fear and excitement only gently in the face of the devastating event at the Sydney Cricket Ground. He is right to ask about the propriety of Mitchell Johnson's methods. But it is not a given that what occurs when a batsman faces a genuinely quick bowler is essentially a story about fear and courage. It is not inherently a matter of machismo even if designated expert interpreters often see it as such. I suggest that it is a story of extreme skill which commentators are not equipped to tell, either because their producers think it is too boring, or simply because they don't possess the vocabulary for it. Much better to simply drool over the primal fear of physical danger.
The danger does not lie in actual cricket, or in actual fast bowling. Left to itself, cricket on the field will ensure that serious injury is exceedingly rare. Coaching, training bowlers and batsmen to chase wickets and runs rather than gratuitous, superficial hostility - these are the staples of the game itself. They discipline the contest. But if players continue to be buffeted by vulgar cheerleading from the commentary box and are encouraged to be gratuitously hostile as part of an increasingly well organized marketing campaign, then excessive hostility like Lee exhibited against Hayward and Ntini (I use the example simply because the video is available. There are doubtless others.) will become more commonplace, and the next tragedy is far more likely to occur in the heat of the moment, rather than as the result of the rarest of mishaps.
It is impossible to make sense of the idea that the game has claimed one of its own as it has. But along with grief, it must also been essential for those who surround the game and make their living off it, to examine whether they are shaping the culture of the game such that it makes makes a tragedy like this even infinitesimally more likely. If it does, they must change.