In the third and final One-Day international (ODI) between the Indian and English women’s teams at Lord’s on 24 September, England needed 17 runs to win off the remaining 39 balls but with just one wicket left. As Deepti Sharma came in to bowl, non-striker Charlotte Dean started to leave her crease. Instead of delivering the ball, Sharma dislodged the bails at her end.
Television replays show that when Sharma struck the wicket, Dean was at least six feet out, not even watching the bowler, and anxiously on her way to take a run. She was declared out, rightfully, and India won a clean 3-0 sweep of the series.
What Sharma did was absolutely within the rules of the game, though there has traditionally been a bit of a shadow over this mode of dismissal, known as “Mankading”, after the great Indian all-rounder Vinoo Mankad. In the Sydney Test against Australia in 1947, Mankad noticed that non-striker Bill Brown was frequently out of the crease. He broke the stumps. This act generated a hue and cry about the “spirit of cricket”, similar to the one we are witnessing now about Sharma.
Mankad’s was the first dismissal of its type in international cricket, though there had been at least 17 such instances in first-class cricket before this. The first one dates as far back as 1835, 52 years before even the first Test match was played—George Baigent run out by Thomas Barker in a Sussex versus Nottinghamshire match. As far we know, no “spirit of the game” issues were raised for these occasions, until an Indian ran a white man out.
The English team has cried foul, and former England cricketers have also criticized Deepti Sharma for “unfair play”. This is absurd. In fact, the only unfair play involved in all these cases was a non-striker setting off before the bowler delivers the ball and getting an unlawful advantage. Yes, Dean was left in tears, but she had only herself to blame.
Sharma has said that that she warned Dean several times and even informed the umpires, but Dean did not mend her ways. Heather Knight, the regular England captain who missed the series, has claimed that Sharma is lying.
A tweet thread by cricket analyst Peter Della Penna shows that during her innings, Dean had been illegally out of the non-striker’s crease a staggering 71 times, before she was Mankaded by Sharma. None of the other English batters had done so. It is highly unlikely that the Indian team did not notice this flouting of a basic cricket law and did not speak to Dean about it. In any case, there is nothing in the rulebook that says that the batter needs to be warned. She is expected to know the rules and abide by them.
But current and former English cricketers have weighed in. Wicketkeeper-batsman Sam Billings tweeted: “There’s surely not a person who has played the game that thinks this is acceptable? Just not cricket…” Yes, Sam, it’s cricket, perfectly by the book.
Former England captain Michael Vaughn tweeted: “Mankad is in the rules, but I hope it’s not a go too (sic) tactic .. You surely don’t train all your lives to win a game using that tactic .. and I know batters should train to stay behind the line but it stinks seeing a game won like that .. Surely we should just ask the umpire whether a warning was given?”
Vaughn was accused last year of racism by three of his Pakistani-origin former Yorkshire teammates. Apparently he told them in 2009 that there were “too many of you lot”. Vaughn said he couldn’t remember saying this but apologised.
It is beginning to seem that English cricketers—specifically batters—and commentators have bestowed upon themselves the right to decide what “cricket” is and what the “spirit of the game” means. England lost its colonies 70 years ago, but it still believes in colonial privilege—lecturing cricketers on how the game should be played. Though, one wonders if these self-appointed judges would utter a word if a Pakistani bowler Mankaded a Sri Lankan batter. It is only when an Englishwoman who has flouted the rules through the match comes croppers that the London sports commentariat goes into a flutter.
All the criticism appears to come down to a deluded colonialist attitude of superiority that it is all right to use bottle caps or sandpaper to degrade the ball, extreme sledging of the batter is fine, or plain cheating, like in the 2020 T20 game against India where wicketkeeper Amy Jones, now the stand-in captain of England, blatantly tried to pass off a spilt catch as a valid dismissal of Indian batter Smriti Mandhana.
At what point does Mankading become acceptable to these people? When the non-striker is four feet out of the crease? Eight feet? Halfway down the pitch? No one seems to compare this issue with the fact that a bowler can overstep the crease by a centimetre and would be penalized for a no-ball. Why the double standards? Why should the game take a benign view of the batters’ transgressions but not of the bowler?
So let’s go to Sir Donald Bradman, the greatest batter of all time and the captain of the Australian team when Vinoo Mankad ran out Bill Brown. This is what he wrote in his autobiography Farewell To Cricket:
“For the life of me I cannot understand why (the press) questioned (Mankad’s) sportsmanship. The laws of cricket make it quite clear that the non-striker must keep within his ground until the ball has been delivered… Mankad was an ideal type, and he was so scrupulously fair that he first of all warned Brown before taking any action. There was absolutely no feeling in the matter as far as we were concerned, for we considered it quite a legitimate part of the game.”
The Don, as far as I am concerned, settles the issue without any recourse to appeal.
It’s the batter who is guilty of unfair play, and he or she should pay the price. Deepti Sharma did absolutely the right—and legal—thing. Perhaps this will lead to batters across the world learning to be less cavalier and more responsible.
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