‘Cowards!’: a short history of world leaders getting involved in the cricket

British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has waded into the controversy over Australia’s victory in the second Ashes Test, with his official spokesman saying: “The prime minister agrees with Ben Stokes. He said he simply wouldn’t want to win a game in the manner Australia did.”

If you’ve clicked on this article you probably don’t need a primer. And if you do need a primer, I suspect the following will be gibberish.

But just to recap: at a key moment in England’s final innings on Sunday, England’s Jonny Bairstow ducked the final ball of an over from Australia’s Cameron Green, and wandered down the pitch, thinking the over had finished and the ball was no longer in play. Australian wicketkeeper Alex Carey tossed the ball into the stumps before the umpire had made that call, and Bairstow was given out. Cue a lot of anger and one of cricket’s periodic discussions over whether a move that’s completely within the rules contravenes the “spirit of the game”.

Sunak’s spokesman was asked whether the British PM thought the spirit of the game had been breached and replied that he did. I mean, if you’re the fourth leader your party has had in just under four years, you’re hardly going to blow up your steadying personal approval ratings by defending your national cricket team’s biggest rivals.

Australian PM Anthony Albanese took the easy W too, tweeting “same old Aussies — always winning!”, repurposing the chant of “same old Aussies, always cheating” that acted as the soundtrack to the remainder of the match.

But if you think world leaders getting steamed over a bit of gamesmanship in a cricket match is just an absurd one-off, here are a few other examples from history.

The underarm delivery

For the final delivery of a thrilling one-day international in 1981 between New Zealand and Australia, Australian captain Greg Chappell instructed his brother Trevor to bowl underarm, along the ground, thus making it impossible for New Zealand’s John McKennie to hit the six that would have tied the game and forced a replay. It was not explicitly prohibited by the rules at the time — this was swiftly changed — and caused visible dissent among some other Australian players.

Australian prime minister at the time Malcolm Fraser conceded it had not been in the spirit of the game, while Robert Muldoon, then-New Zealand prime minister, got in a decent sledge, calling the delivery an “act of true cowardice … I consider it appropriate that the Australian team were wearing yellow”.

John Howard gives his thoughts

Muttiah Muralitharan, now the highest wicket-taker in cricket history, faced constant attention for his unconventional action, which lead to accusations of “throwing”, breaking the law that forbids the straightening of the arm in the act of delivery. Only twice was he actually called for it — both times in Australia, by Australian umpires, calling “no-ball” several times (i.e. an illegitimate delivery) on account of his action.

In 2004, “cricket tragic” and then-Australian prime minister John Howard weighed in, answering “Yes” when asked if the Sri Lankan had “chucked” the ball. “They proved it in Perth too, with that thing,” he helpfully added, miming a video screen — Perth biomechanics experts had recently found Murali straightened his arm by more than the allowed angle in bowling a delivery (the next month Murali would bowl in a moulded arm brace that prevented him straightening his arm with no major impediments). We guess Howard’s fussiness when it comes to levels of evidence really varies depending on what he’s being asked about. He would later be flabbergasted when six out of 10 countries banded together to dismiss Australia and New Zealand’s bid to make him president of the International Cricket Council.

The laughter stops

In 2016, Pakistani comedian Asif Muhammad, known as Mr Pak Bean, performed a comedy routine in the Zimbabwean capital Harare impersonating British actor Rowan Atkinson’s iconic character Mr Bean. It went so badly that, six full years later when the Zimbabwean cricket team beat Pakistan by a single run in the T20 World Cup, the hardman president of Zimbabwe, Emmerson Dambudzo Mnangagwa, added, “Next time, send the real Mr Bean,” in his tweet congratulating his team.

Religious persecution in India

The politics of cricket between Pakistan and India would require an entire piece to even begin to explicate, but perhaps the most pungent example of where matters stand is the 2021 arrest of several Indian Muslims under a section of the Indian penal code that criminalises “assertions prejudicial to national integration”. Their crime had been to celebrate Pakistan’s victory over India in the opening match of the T20 World Cup.

Bodyline

Before Sandpapergate, “bodyline” was the byword for cricketing scandal. In the early 1930s, Australia was blessed with almost certainly the greatest cricketer ever to pick up a bat, Donald Bradman. In order to curtail his superlative scoring in 1932-33, England devised a strategy of bowling short, fast and at the body and head, while cramming fielders close to the legside, reasoning that attempts by Bradman and others to fend the ball away would result in more catches. (Again, if you’re new to cricket and you’ve struggled this far, I can only apologise. There’s just no way to explain this stuff to the uninitiated without sounding like you’re insane.)

In the era before protective gear, and with lightning-quick Harold Larwood in the side, it was brutal, and effective. Bert Oldfield had his skull fractured, Bill Woodfull took a fearful blow above his heart, Bradman managed his lowest average for any Test series he played, and England won 4-1.

The Australian Board of Control for International Cricket sent a terse telegram to the English cricket administrators at the MCC in January 1933 calling the tactic “unsportsmanlike”, which earned the reply, as furious as one could get in official correspondence in 1933: “We, Marylebone Cricket Club, deplore your cable. We deprecate your opinion that there has been unsportsmanlike play.”

The board was forced to back down after pressure from then-Australian prime minister Joseph Lyon, who knew a thing or two about playing both sides and had warned that a British boycott of Australian goods would be devastating.