Cricket on a dicey wicket once more

Dubai: Is ball-tampering showing its ugly face in cricket again? The allegations about Indian captain Virat Kohli attempting to tamper the ball in the first Test against England grabbed headlines on Tuesday, while South African stand-in captain Faf du Plessis has been found guilty of ball-tampering by International Cricket Council (ICC) and fined his entire match fee from the Hobart Test against Australia.

Du Plessis was caught on camera applying sugary saliva to the cricket ball with a mint in his mouth. Incidentally, Du Plessis had made an attempt during the 2013 series against Pakistan in Dubai too. He was seen scuffing the ball against a zip pocket on the lower portion of his trouser leg and the umpires added five runs to Pakistan total and changed the ball. He was fined 50 per cent of his match fee.

Kohli, meanwhile, has been accused by a British tabloid which contended the Indian captain trying to shine the ball with the residue of a sweet in his mouth during the first Test match against England which ended in a draw. Unlike in Du Plessis’s case, the ICC rejected a ball-tampering investigation against the Indian skipper, stating that the video from the Rajkot Test was nine days old and thus action could not be taken on it.

As per ICC regulations on ball tampering, if a team wants to lodge a complaint about ball tampering by a rival team or its player, it has to be done within five days of the completion of the Test match. However, there has been no complaint filed by the visiting team and they declined to comment on the issue.

TV cameras showed Kohli putting his right hand towards his mouth and rubbing his finger in his mouth, inside of which is a sweet, and he appears to shine one side of the ball with it. Kohli’s action was not cited by the umpires or the match referee.

Both their act is a breach of the Article 2.2.9 of the ICC Code of Conduct which deals with ‘changing the condition of the ball.’ The law says that players may polish the ball, provided that no artificial substance is used and that such polishing wastes no time.

It has been found that applying smooth substances like vaseline, lip balm or sweetened saliva to the smooth side of the ball results in it becoming smoother — creating more pressure difference between the smooth and rough sides and leading to severe swing of the ball.

The case of Sachin Tendulkar, who was suspended for one match after being accused of ball tampering led to a huge furore. In the second Test match of India’s 2001 tour to South Africa, match referee Mike Denness suspended Tendulkar after television camera picked images of him scuffing the seam of the ball whereas he was apparently removing pieces of grass lodged in the seam of the ball.

In 2006, when umpires Darrell Hair and Billy Doctrove ruled that Inzamam-ul Haq’s Pakistan team had been involving in ball-tampering, the whole team refused to take the field in the Oval Test and the match was awarded to England.