Dialogue: Aussies' hands jammed in own cash register drawer

Herald cricket writer Richard Boock's criticism of Black Caps captain Stephen Fleming's use of the rules in the one-day tri-series in Australia has raised controversy on both sides of the Tasman. Former Herald sportswriter D.J. CAMERON puts his spin on it.

When an American was watching his first game of cricket he asked, after a particularly brilliant passage of bowling, batting, fielding and an unsuccessful attempt to obtain a run or a run out, how that would be recorded.

"By a dot in the bowler's analysis in the scorebook," he was told.

"I sure would like to see that dot," said the bemused Yank.

Just as much as we, now embroiled in a dispute involving the infernal triangle described by Australian cricket, the New Zealand captain and the columns of the New Zealand Herald, would like to cast our eyes over that bonus point.

But before we analyse the overexcited reaction of the newspaper, or whether Stephen Fleming was guilty of unethical conduct, we should examine the one-day international game itself.

The present Australian form of the one-day game was the offspring of a shotgun union between Kerry Packer and the Australian Cricket Board of the time.

The pre-marital contract promised, even after such a shaky courtship, that both Australian cricket and Packer's television channel would profit enormously.

Since then this special form of the shortened game has been striving, unsuccessfully, to throw off its illegitimate shadow, however loud the rattle of the cash register.

Rather it has developed as a commercially contrived industry, being regularly reinvented by the Australians to maintain a strong attraction for sponsors and the people who pay at the gate.

Change has followed change. The underarm bowl was banned after 1981, two balls were used in each innings for a time, fielding restrictions were introduced, playing techniques were devised to encourage negative bowling or batting methods unthinkable in serious cricket.

The marketeers insisted that such changes were necessary to maintain the drawing power of the one-day game. The money men know their Australians, and their mad passion for watching sport, especially when Australia is a consistent winner.

The changes have come and gone. Now we have the bonus point as an example that Australian administrators cannot foresee the impact such changes may have on the game. The bonus point is not likely to survive that short trial.

In passing, the bonus point was introduced in Australia this year by a sponsor's man aiming to avoid tame finishes in the six-team domestic one-day competition.

He is probably annoyed that the administrators did not see the danger of using his bonus system to decide placings in a three-team, four-round competition.

So the Australian form of one-day competition still labours under the slur of illegitimacy, and it is doubtful whether the Australian form of one-day cricket can be taken seriously in the matter of ethics and sportsmanship.

Certainly, it cannot hope to contain the Corinthian morality that distinguished the real game of cricket through the first half of the last century.

Sufficient of that nobility remains in these frantic times still to offer an old-fashioned dignity to the game.

So Fleming cannot, by opting for the bonus point, be accused of acting outside the ethics and morals of cricket, for such do not flourish (if they ever did exist) in the Australian one-day game. Rather he could be regarded as the industrialist taking advantage of commercial circumstances.

It is little wonder that Fleming might cast an eye full of bale at the Herald. Perhaps 12 months ago, the newspaper was thundering that Fleming did not deserve to retain the captaincy.

Lately, the Herald's treatment of the captain has paid credit to his leadership and his grasp of strategy. Even Australian television commentators have been joining in the hymns of praise.

Suddenly the dustcart comes along after the Lord Mayor's Show.

Fleming is identified (perhaps vilified might be the better word) as breaching the ethics of the game by his bonus point decision. His inclusion among what are regarded as the unethical one-day cricket actions of recent times has brought the distasteful allegory that measures cricket manners against the tragic undertones of shipwreck.

The fascination with the wide-eyes-opening flippant comment have not been improved by accompanying headlines which verge on the cute or even callous - "Fleming's shenanigans ... "as the front-page banner comes to mind.

In the wake of such over-dramatised cricket offerings, one or two newspaper principles need examining.

One is the solid and stable bulwark - opinions are free, facts are sacred.

Another is that certainty among the fruitier daily tabloids (especially those not a million miles from Fleet St) that readers have short memories. The beat-up yarn on a Tuesday will be forgotten by the Thursday reader who is greeted with a another beat-up taking the opposite tack.

There is also the proposition that so much of the anti-Fleming comment comes with the gift of hindsight.

The fact that bonus points might decide the outcome of the tri-series was not exactly news. Only a couple of days before the South Africa-New Zealand match at Perth was it noted that should New Zealand concede a bonus point on the Friday Australia would have the difficult task of qualifying on Sunday for the play-off.

This was even noted, in a passing paragraph or two, at the bottom of a Herald preview to the New Zealand-South Africa game. Might not this fact have been the stronger headline material for the newspaper's preview?

There is the passing, and partial, thought that some form of justice has Australia sitting on the sidelines while South Africa and New Zealand play in the finals.

We have suffered a lot from Australian cricket, without thinking back to our country-cousin status before and after the Second World War.

New Zealand have touched the forelock to the transtasman masters often enough. They have competed in many one-day tri-series in which the Australians have blatantly arranged the playing schedules to their own advantage.

New Zealand, and the others, have many, many times had to suffer from the whims and the consistent errors (nay, bias) of the umpires. We await with pleasure the arrival of independent one-day umpires from April onward.

Amid all the fuss and bother, the banging of drums one day, and pot-lids the next, it does bring a certain if cynical pleasure at seeing the Australians jam their own hand in their own cash-register drawer.