YP Comment: It's just not cricket
SO long the gentleman's game, how depressing that cricket has been dragged down to football's dispiriting level when it comes to on-field behaviour and that umpires will, in future, have the power to show abusive players the red card for dissent.
It was not like this in Dickie Bird’s day when his own eccentricities, loved around the world, helped diffuse the most incendiary of situations. He did so because players, some more combustible in character than others, truly respected his decision and vice-versa when he raised his dreaded finger to dismiss a batsman.
The key word is ‘respect’. If clubs in the local leagues were more willing to have a quiet word with a player who overstepped the mark, and if the game’s international stars like Yorkshire’s very own Joe Root set a better example as role models rather than undermining the umpire by asking for so many decisions to be reviewed willy-nilly, cricket would not be facing an unsporting struggle for its heart and soul.