Chris Waters: New sportsmanship campaign targeting the wrong audience

Marylebone Cricket Club polled 1,002 children aged between eight and 16, with three-quarters saying that fellow team members would cheat if they knew they could get away with it, and more than half saying they witness cheating in every game they play.

One in three children said they were influenced by the cheating they see across all professional sports in the UK, while only 16 per cent said their school colleagues felt guilty if they cheated to win.

Now coaches from the cricket charity Chance to Shine are to deliver assemblies and lessons in good sportsmanship, proclaiming the message that sporting cheats are “not cool for school” in an effort to show youngsters right from wrong.

Examples of the cheating witnessed at school level included:

Being paid money to concede a goal

Players diving in an attempt to gain penalties

Somebody using their hand to score a goal

Trying to injure the opposition’s best player

Going the wrong way to get to the finish line first

Claiming to catch a cricket ball that had actually bounced

Players pretending to be hurt

Time-wasting

“It is vital children are taught the importance of playing sport in the correct spirit,” declared MCC chief executive Derek Brewer, while Wasim Khan, chief executive of Chance to Shine, commented: “It is a real concern to us that so many youngsters struggle in this ‘pressure cooker’ to win at all costs.

“We teach children the importance of playing sport competitively and fairly whilst also respecting the rules and the opposition.”

Like me, I am sure you will join Messrs Brewer and Khan in extolling the virtues of fair play and wish them well in this admirable venture.

Like me, too, perhaps, you might wonder whether it is the equivalent of trying to treat a broken leg by applying a sticking plaster to a broken nose.

For it is all very well encouraging youngsters to play sport in the right spirit, to urge them to respect their team-mates, the opposition and match officials.

It is all very well telling them they should win and lose graciously.

But unless that ethos starts at the top – with the professional sportsmen themselves – it is surely an enterprise doomed to failure. For the simple fact is that children copy what they see on television; they imitate the way their heroes behave.

It is why cheating in schools is rife because it merely mimics the antics of the professional game.

No amount of lessons or assemblies are going to work in isolation; it needs a collective effort to stamp out the problem.

It is perhaps symbolic that cricket has conducted this sportsmanship survey.

For years, the game prided itself on being a bastion of fair play, but it is hardly immune to sharp practice now.

In recent times, there have been match-fixing cases involving the late Hansie Cronje, the disgraced former South Africa cricket captain, along with spot-fixing episodes involving the Pakistanis Salman Butt, Mohammad Amir and Mohammad Asif.

The Pakistanis were jailed for their roles in a betting scam during the 2010 Test series in England, while another Pakistani player, Danish Kaneria, was banned for life by the ECB last June for corruption in a fixing case in county cricket that also involved former Essex team-mate Mervyn Westfield.

Even as recently as last week, former international umpire Nadeem Ghauri was banned by the Pakistan CB for four years.

Ghauri was among six Asian officials investigated following an expose of alleged corruption in cricket broadcast on India TV in 2012.

At the same time, the PCB banned domestic umpire Anis Siddiqui for three years, while the Bangladesh CB last month banned umpire Nadir Shah for 10 years after its own investigations into the allegations in the India TV programme.

Although such cases are at the upper end of the cheating scale, lesser forms of cheating – conveniently passed off as gamesmanship – are as widespread in professional cricket as they are in most professional sports, it would seem. For example, how many batsmen walk nowadays when they have edged the ball?

How many batsmen take a fielder’s word for it when it comes to a disputed catch?

You do not need me to tell you the answer.

Forget all that claptrap about the spirit of cricket being paramount; the professional game today is a ruthless business.

The niceties of fair play may soon be a thing of the past as the pursuit of money becomes the be-all and end-all.

None more so than in professional football, where the antics of players are shameful to behold, and where referees are treated with such contempt that “Respect” campaigns and so forth are so laughably inadequate as to be embarrassing.

Of course, one can hardly broach the subject of cheating in sport without mentioning two words: Luis Suarez.

When children watch high-profile footballers such as Liverpool’s Suarez breaking the rules whenever they think they can get away with it, are we honestly to imagine that a few assemblies promoting good sportsmanship are going to persuade those who idolise them to choose an alternative path?

It is at individuals like Suarez – and institutions such as Premier League football clubs – that such initiatives should be directed, not at children who are only copying what they see from those who 
are supposed to be their role models.

and another thing...

CONGRATULATIONS to my esteemed press box colleague David Warner, who has gained one of sports journalism’s most prestigious accolades.

‘Plum’ has been named president of the Cricket Writers’ Club in succession to the late journalist and broadcaster Christopher Martin-Jenkins, who sadly died on New Year’s Day.

‘Plum’ has covered Yorkshire CCC since 1975 and is one of the most respected and well-liked operators on the circuit.

There have been many distinguished CWC presidents, including Alan Gibson, Tony Lewis, Michael Melford, John Woodcock, Derek Hodgson, Robin Marlar and Martin-Jenkins himself, but none more popular than ‘Plum’.

He described his appointment as “the greatest honour imaginable in cricket journalism” and covering Yorkshire as “a fantastic experience with numerous moments I will never forget.

“What means even more to me, however,” he added, “is the camaraderie I have enjoyed in press boxes around the country and the close friendships I have formed with colleagues and cricketers alike.”

That, in a nutshell, is the essence of ‘Plum’, and why we wish him all the best in this well-deserved role.