My paper, this morning, is full of the story about Strauss not forcing the Aussies to play the third test with 10 men by letting them replace a player who was injured in the warm up. And it is not confined to the sports pages. It is being reported as if this is one of the finest examples of sportsmanship in the last 100 years!
I am a football fan and don't really follow the more gentlemanly and morally superior English middle class team sports such as rugby union and cricket so there are many rules and regulations in both sports I don't know. But surely there is not a team sport in the world where, in the same circumstances, the team captain would not have allowed the opposition to replace the injured player. How can this be considered an example of sportsmanship?
After watching the blatant time wasting by England (cheating in any other sport) in the first test, which, apparently, was ok because Australia have been cheating for years, I am beginning to think that cricket has become so devoid of true sportsmanship that the most insignificant act or gesture has to be hyped as an example of the highest sportsmanship.
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The finest example of sportsmanship in a hundred years is over-doing it, and what goes around comes around. Sometimes it's best to pay these things forward, but a noble gesture all the same.
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It wasn't ok because the Aussies had been cheating for years, but because the umpires allowed it, the two umpires could have sent the two substitutes from the field but didn't and England exploited the rules as far as they could. But rules get pushed in all sports. Rugby sanctions or turns a blind eye to a fair amount of violence on the pitch that football penalises (punching etc), but in rugby if a player takes a punch they invariably accept it. In football how often have we seen theatrics when a player is barely touched yet dives likes h's been mortally wounded?
I don't believe there was ever a golden era for sportsmanship, but what goes around comes around, play to the set of moral rules you want to stick too and if they push the letter of the law then don't complain when you're the victim.
All in the rules for the time...
players get injured in the warm up after the team sheet is put in and the other team allows them to change the player
yep a true gent and not as such not a typical Convict
Or the comes back if we'd managed to beat a team with only ten men?