Mankading: A Case Study

The Daily Telegraph has devoted an entire page to the dismissal

This is a quick note. I record this here, because I happen to own Scyld Berry’s 2015 book Cricket The Game of Life, in which he offered a short paragraph on mankading in Chapter 8 which titled The Spirit of Cricket.

Here’s what he said in Chapter 8 of that book. The Chapter is titled ‘The Spirit of Cricket’. The example he used was that of Vinoo Mankad dismissing Bill Brown twice on the 1947-48 tour, once in a tour match and then in the Sydney Test. Berry notes the following:

“Disproportionality seems to me to be the key here: the punishment of Mankading is not proportionate to the crime. The crime is to get a head start in running between wickets (for the sake of the striker an the team, without any difrect benefit for the non-strike); the punishment is for the non-strike to be run out. Natural justice says that someone shuld not lose his life for a minor offense, especially if he has not been warned”

Here’s Berry’s view of the Dean case:

“Cricket, and the taking of wickets, should be a matter of skill and athleticism. Taking a wicket with a “Mankad” - when Charlie Dean, in this case, was backing up in the conventional way - is craftiness, not cricket”

“And there is always the argument the Ancient Greek philosophers used: what happens if everyone does it? Cricket would degenerate into niggliness, acrimony and a standstill if every club bowler and schoolkid started to do what Sharma did. Game over - or, rather, game not worth playing.”

Berry then goes on to say that “The first instance in first-class cricket occured on India’s tour of Australia in 1947-48”. This claim, which is repeated by Simon Heffer, is incorrect. Wikipedia has an incomplete listing of all known mankad dismissals which dates back to 1835 in first class cricket.

Berry suggests that the law be changed “so that the non-striker must stay in his/her ground until the bowler begins his/her arm-swing. And the bowler, having started the process of delivery, is not allowed then to take the bails off instead of bowling the ball”.

It’s not clear how this will ameliorate Berry’s concern. All that this change seems to achieve is to change the point at which the non-striker is required to remain in her crease from “when the bowler would normally have been expected to release the ball” as it is in the current law (i.e. when the arm is at the highest point in the delivery arc), to the beginning of the delivery arc.

Berry’s view seems to have moved from worrying that dismissal is disproportionate punishment, to saying that mankading is crafty. The non-striker’s “crime”, which Berry noticed in the case of Brown, has disappeared. Now, Berry seems to suggest, that it is the bowler who tricked the batter into being dismissed.

This is a theme which runs through the Daily Telegraph’s coverage. Nick Hoult begins his essay with a surprisingly perverse sentence which begins as follows: “The run out of a non-striker by the bowler is no longer considered unfair play under the Laws of the Game… ”

This is surprising because Hoult is, otherwise, an excellent reporter (and he makes a good point about mankads occurring in tight contests). The sentence is perverse because running out the non-striker has never been considered unfair play under the Laws of Cricket. The “Unfair Play” is the “Non-striker leaving his/her ground early”, not the bowler running her out at the non-striker’s end for doing so.

Simon Heffer’s chief complaint seems to be that professional cricketers seem to want to compete.

The prominence given to this episode by the Telegraph, and the remarkably poor quality of their attention - they have misunderstand the law and they don’t know it’s history - the purpose of which seems to be the reinforce, at every opportunity, the malicious suggestion that it was the bowler who engaged in sharp practice, and not the non-striker, reveals anxieties which are worthy of inquiry.

Plainly, the dismissal was not crafty. It was squarely cricket. The non-striker was risking dismissal by stealing yards every ball, and the bowler caught her out.

For the outstanding journalistic coverage of this event, I recommend Peter Della Penna’s superb twitter thread, in which goes over the whole innings.

Peter Della Penna @PeterDellaPenna

Went back to the full match replay. Charlie Dean was leaving her crease early starting with her 2nd ball at the non-striker's end in the 18th over. Ball still in bowler's hand. Dean is never looking at the bowler to see if/when the ball has been released. Basic lack of awareness.