Law and Justice

I was just watching a 20-20 cricket match of IPL. The match was between "Chennai Super Kings" and "Kolkatta Knight Riders". Dhoni's CSK had already done enough damage on the batting on Ganguly's KKR. It was the penultimate ball of the last over. Laxmi Shukla - the in form batsman who had scored 42 of 30 balls in that innings - played the ball straight to the fielder. Runner Ishant Sharma had started already. Usual scene of ball on bowler's hand near the runner's stumps and both batsman almost on the other end. Bowler did not take the bail off yet from the runner's wicket. But not being aware of this minute detail, Ishant already started walking towards the pavilion in that course crossed Laxmi Shukla. Dhoni then urged the runners bail be taken off and appealed to the umpire that it should be Laxmi Shukla who should be given out. That is because the batsman had crossed!!!!!. It was given so.

Sometime back, in another ODI between Srilanka and India, Sehwag steered the ball to third man. As one might observe in any match, Sehwag walked the run and on reaching runner end, he took the position like batsman and started to "practice" the shot. However, he did not realize that he had not grounded his bat on runner's crease. Sangakara was keen to observe this and hit the ball at runner's stumps and appealed for out. Sehwag was given out.

I think in both occasions, the spirit of the game has been undermined against the success by the players ( Dhoni and Sangakara in the above example). Moreover, I was just wondering the need of the "relevant" rules and their applicability. In my young days, when we used to play in the village - local form of cricket, with big stones as stump and sometimes ball made of cycle tube - we had a peculiar rule. If for some reason, the bat will slip away from the batsman, he will be declared out. A variant of the above rule is the batsman is out only if a member of the opponent team takes the bat in the above situation.

The rules are in place to make some order to the game and not to "apply tricks". But in both above occasion, the rules have been applied "blindly" ignoring the spirit of the game by the umpires. In the first occasion, Ishant would not have crossed Laxmi Shukla if the pavilion was on the other side. Bottom line, the cross over happened not when the batsman was taking a run, which I suppose is the basic assumption underlying the rule. On the second occasion, the batsman had demonstrated his ability to cover the stipulated distance,which I believe the reason for imposing the rule - batsman should have landed on the crease - and still left with plenty of time. However, in both occasions, umpires have upheld the applicability of the law over the spirit of the game.

In our day-to-day life as well, we step across many times situations where people argue on applicability of law without realizing the "justice" which is to more address the human side of the issue. That reminds me the dialogue from Jesus of Nazareth, Jesus says: " The law is not just to be scultptured on the stone. It has a life. As long as we do not understand it, it will remain only as a stone". Well, that way the ICC rules are well written in books. NEverthless these are not singled out instances in history. One famous example I can think of is the story of "Ambikapathi - Amaravathi". The former was killed because he had counted the "Prayer song" as part of the 100 songs he was supposed to sing before seeing is beloved!!!!!