DIRTY TRICKS
This is not the odd case on the cricketing field and it is the oldest profession to change the shape, remove the shine or to keep shine on one side, or to roughen the entire ball to get better grip for spinners or to get reverse swing for medium pacers. Soda Water bottle cap spread in the boundary line helped our Ranji cricketers to roughen the ball when the ball is hit to the boundary. As there were no camera for Ranji games, players deliberately waited in the boundary line and made sure that the ball is roughened up to the desired level before throwing the ball back to the bowler. Pakistan pacemen were the best in the business once upon a time but others learned the art by experience. India's Manoj Prbhakar used to reverse swing the old ball to perfection and taught the act to Kapil Dev, the then captain of the side and highest wicket taker in test cricket at one point of time at 432 wickets, surpassing 431 wickets of Richard Hadlee of New Zealand. In school and college level cricketers, players used to apply hair oil in their person to keep the shine on the ball going. Mansur Ali Khan Pataudi (jr) rolled the new ball on the turf to remove the shine and for the early introduction of Bedi and Prasanna into the attack and the Indian Umpires those days were just sorry spectators as the Indian captain was doing the damage to the ball. Afridi went on to bite the ball in the field to make it rough and help Pakistan side to win at least one game.
Mike Atherton made it rather easy as he brought some dirt inside his pocket and on entering the ground and having got the ball in possession from the umpire after a break, he slowly applied dirt on the ball but was caught red handed in the process. The worst of all the ball tampering was seen in India in the 1977-78 series against England. Tony Greig showered praise on our umpires on reaching India by saying that the Indian umpires are the best in the world. And this send a wrong signal as our umpires failed to note Vaseline being applied by John Lever, the left-arm medium pace bowler playing test cricket for the first time finished as the best all rounder in his debut match as well the series. He was keeping a capsule in his eye brow to prevent sweat entering but inside the capsule Vaseline was kept for easy application. Despite Indian Umpires officiating England were 3-0 up when in the next test Team India could win the Bangalore test with an under prepared wicket and most of the catches close in were taken of the pads and Indian umpires obliged and one Yujuvendra Singh created a new world record of 7 catches close to the wicket. Rahul Dravid was caught while applying lozenge to the ball but not penalised much. Sachin Tendulkar, the man in limelight picked the seam of the ball in South Africa (watch you tube-Sachin Picking the seam of the ball) and try to provide better grip to our spinners but left alone with least punishment. It is all in the game and the Asian Countries Bangladesh, India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka perfected the art to make best use in a cricketing field. Now Du Plessis is punished for his offence and we have to wait and watch the next way of tampering in a cricketing field as the cameras are filming the dirty tricks and the umpires turn round and watch the bowler, when he goes to the top of the run before delivering the ball, such unfair methods should come down drastically in present day cricket. Thus dirty tricks spoil the gentleman's game and most of senior cricketers did in different styles and used different methods to roughen the ball and give an extra edge to their bowlers. This is not the proper way playing cricket but they chose the option to meet success for their team by hook or crook. Dirty tricks continue to haunt International cricket.
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