Sledging – A boon or bane for the gentleman’s game?

When Glenn McGrath had a go at Ramnaresh Sarwan

While being on the 22 yards, the inevitable sources of distractions to which a batsman usually falls prey to, can easily form a substantial list if you really starts preparing one.

The exuberant throng of fans cheering from stands; the famous “sight screen glitches” (usually seen attracting strong reactions from star players!); the pressure build-up by an attacking infield setup put in place by the bowling team captain and last but certainly not the least, “the statistical distractions” – team falling behind planned run rate, personal score being near a fifty or in the nineties!, are a few major distractions which time and again have proven to be potential candidates of breaking a batsman’s concentration and can easily be named culprits of provoking an in-form batsmen to throw his wicket to the opposition.

You might have already started sympathizing with the “victimized” batsmen, but it might well be a better idea to look into some other related aspects, before attempting to form an opinion on the subject in a holistic way!

Being an ardent follower of the game and especially the high profile test matches, the “smack talk” between players on the field shouldn’t have gone unnoticed for you. These verbal intimidations practiced by players, aimed at breaking each other’s concentration and gaining psychological advantage, comprise a major part of the phenomenon called “sledging”.

Most common sight of sledging on the field involves a fast bowler in his follow through, running up to the batsman and exchanging a few harsh words or giving fierce looks/actions. This usually happens as a reaction to situations like – bowler been smashed around the park in the earlier part of his spell and then managed to bowl a few good deliveries like bouncers to which the batsman had no reply except ducking/leaving. Another situation being an annoying batsman in test cricket, who just leaves every other delivery, testing bowler’s patience (who can forget the irritated faces of the likes of Lee and Gillespie while bowling to Akash Chopra in the bilateral series of 2003/04!).

Interestingly it’s not always the bowler who initiates sledging; there are enough instances where the batsman acted as the culprit. The drama in the famous 1996 world cup India-Pakistan match in Bangalore, featuring Aamir Sohail and Venkatesh Prasad is an apt example, though in this case the then Pak captain fell prey to his own trap of bullying as he was clean bowled by Prasad on the very next ball.

There have been an ample number of instances, where the instead of the bowler, the fielders have taken the driver’s seat and tried in their own ways to take advantage of sledging. The Aussies have been notorious in the game for being the master of the art of sledging, so much so that they earned the title ‘Ugly Australians’ during the 1974-75 period. This was even more evident in the Ricky Ponting era when the Aussies were dominating world cricket.

As we head towards concluding remarks on the subject, I would like to highlight and emphasize that even though a lot of heated sequences on the cricket field are seen under the umbrella of sledging, but the ones which are actual quarrels and not just mere intimidations should be looked into from an appropriate perspective by the viewers like us. As long sledging is a well-planned strategy of a team or even in cas