Fair Game?

by Sheldon Waithe

The fallacy that somehow international sports and politics are not intertwined, disappeared many decades ago. From the banning of South Africa from the Olympic Games in 1964 due to their apartheid policies, to the many boycotts of major events throughout the past 50 years, as nations sought to make a political statement, sports and politics have been slightly uncomfortable bed mates.

When Adolf Hitler used the 1936 Olympics as a propaganda platform (thank you Jesse Owens, for dispelling the ‘master race’ notion on German soil) it propelled the ideologies of Nazism into the German national consciousness, providing a boost for what would come a mere three years later. Similarly, Vladimir Putin’s Russia hosted the Winter Olympics in 2014 and then the men’s football World Cup in 2018, providing a boost to a leader’s policies to impart to his population and giving him a de facto platform to pontificate to the world. A show of strength, if you will.

Perhaps it is a win-win situation. Ask any football fan if they enjoyed the 2018 World Cup and the answer is a resounding “Yes!” Ask the winning French team and it would not matter where the tournament was held or who handed over the trophy. Regardless of where it is hosted, the sport wins, the global audience wins and the host wins.

Sport has also become big business, generating billions as an industry with every discipline seeking a piece of the pie. Naturally, the more moneyed entities tend to have greater success within this realm. Behind the scenes, they hold greater influence, but for the sake of their sport and the ideology of fair play - which is the single most important aspect of any sporting discipline - no single team can be seen to dictate the terms of their participation. To use the age-old phrase to allude to unfairness, ‘it’s just not cricket’.

Which leads us perfectly into the matter at hand, the recently concluded men’s T20 World Cup hosted by the West Indies and USA. Openly intended as a big push to get cricket into the lucrative US market, utilising the legendary festive atmosphere of the shortest format of the game, with is origins in Caribbean cricket, the tournament was in the main, successful. Regardless of the poor pitches that did not suit the explosiveness of T20 cricket, or that some matches were poorly attended, global fans tuned in, the region’s mood was lifted, cricket was once again on everyone’s lips.

But one dark cloud hangs over the sport following the conclusion of tournament, one that does not threaten to stop play, but instead reveals unfairness in favour of one of those moneyed sporting entities that is flexing its political muscle. ?

Before the first ball was bowled at the World Cup, the arrangement was in place that should India make it to the semi-finals, it would be played in Guyana, at 10:30AM (the same time allotted to the final) to suit the television audience in India, who could watch in the early evening, India time.

Forget the poor souls from nations that have to get up in the wee hours to watch their game, India is the moneyed core of world cricket, home of the IPL, so heaven and earth was moved to give their fans and by extension, their team, a competitive advantage. ?

The optics for cricket, as it tries to breach new markets, are terrible. If the answer is that money talks, then how does it look when it buys unfairness?

When a sport starts practicing the bending of rules to favour one team in particular, then eventually, it loses its attraction. Cricket has long been held up as the epitome of fair play; a batsman walking when he knows he has edged the ball, a fieldsman not claiming a catch when it touched the ground, the very notion of the unbiased umpire. These are ideals that can become corrupted, as with any sphere of life, but they still act as the core values of the sport.?

India, as expected, arrived with a full complement of world class players eagerly seeking a first ICC trophy in eleven years. They needed to play outstanding cricket to win that trophy and they did; few can argue that point.

But at the elite level of sport the differences to be had from marginal gains can be the difference between victory and defeat. Knowing the venue, the pitch conditions, date and time of your potential semi-final, months ahead of the competition, is easily deemed a marginal gain. How can advance knowledge be considered anything else?

It places a small question mark over a World Cup win, something that no sport wants for its marquee global event. If that seems unfair to India, then the unfairness is magnified for their opponents, who had to go into matches knowing that India are openly being favoured by the sport’s global governing body.

Consider this, the first semifinal in Trinidad was allotted a reserve day, the second semifinal in Guyana, already assigned to India once they qualified, was not given a reserve day. Rain or not, it needed to be completed in a single day. Two semifinals, two different rules, partially to ensure that the grand finale, will also be played at 10:30AM.

For the other competing nations, its not a fair game and cricket needs to remedy this blatant favouritism if it wants to grow the sport.

?

Sheldon Waithe is the Creative Director at Communique Media Services Ltd website: communiquett.com

?