Decision not to walk was sadly predictable and in stark contrast to example set by a former Ashes great.
Modern sport is peppered with examples of players declining to turn
themselves into the authorities. Moral self-policing is rare.
If there was ever a true Spirit of Cricket, it took the day off at Trent Bridge when Stuart Broad blatantly nicked a delivery to first slip but chose not to walk. Social media erupted with an amazing array of verdicts, ranging from cheat to sensible, from skulduggery to understandable opportunism.
Not for the first time the argument veered off in the direction of moral equivalence. Would an Australian batsman say he would walk in those circumstances? If no, presumably, the problem goes away because we are all as cynical as each other. If yes, the Aussies are telling porkies. A vital moral question soon became another Ashes bunfight.
Temperatures were already running high here from the Jonathan Trott dismissal the day before. Not that personal rectitude was at stake when a not-out lbw call against Trott was overturned, despite Hot Spot being unavailable. That decision by Marais Erasmus, the third umpire, cast doubt on the protocols for the use of technology.
But it was an arcane procedural argument compared to the furore over Broad, which was witnessed by millions on television and unleashed a kind of Twitter hell. Watching Broad stand his ground after Aleem Dar had failed to hear or see a thick edge off an Ashton Agar delivery was Darren Lehmann, the Australia coach, who played in the game made famous by Adam Gilchrist's walk, 10 years ago, in a semi-final against Sri Lanka of the Cricket World Cup. Gilchrist is the starting point on walking, which is defined as "the act of a batsman giving himself out, without waiting for an umpire's decision".
In his autobiography, which he even called Walking to Victory, Gilchrist recalled the moment an Aravinda de Silva ball popped off his bat and into the wicketkeeper's gloves. "Then, to see the umpire shaking his head, meaning, 'Not out', gave me the strangest feeling," Gilchrist wrote. "I don't recall what my exact thoughts were, but somewhere in the back of my mind, all that history from the Ashes series was swirling around. Michael Vaughan, Nasser Hussain and other batsmen, both in my team and against us, who had stood their ground in those "close" catching incidents were definitely a factor in what happened in the following seconds. "I had spent all summer wondering if it was possible to take ownership of these incidents and still be successful. I had wondered what I would do. I was about to find out. The voice in my head was emphatic. Go. Walk. And I did. "It was a really weird sensation to go against the grain of what 99 per cent of cricketers do these days, and what we've been doing for our whole careers. I was annoyed because I felt like I was batting well and had the chance to lay the foundation for a big team score - and it was me taking that away from myself." Some hailed Gilchrist as a groundbreaker. But everyone knows many in his team were livid, and turned on him, for a supposedly needless show of honesty.
Ethics aside, the counter-case against Gilchrist's noble act was he had performed the umpire's job for him when his real obligation was to help Australia win the match. He described his team-mates as "flabbergasted" but said: "I kept going back to the fact that, well, at the end of the day, I had been honest with myself. I felt it was time that players made a stand to take back responsibility for the game. I was at ease with that. The more I thought about it, the more settled I became with what I'd done." The heart soars to read this. But we know it does not correspond to the modern world of sport. Michael Clarke, the Australia captain, who took the Broad catch, has himself apologised for not walking in a match (he was dismissed on review). Similarly it could be argued that Clarke frittered away his reviews and was thus unable to challenge Aleem Dar's inexplicable failure to see that Broad was out.
An absorbing moral ping-pong match ensued. What if it had been the thinnest of edges instead of a thick one? Was it the obviousness of deflection that stained Broad's reputation? Should we expect one man to walk if he has seen countless others stand their ground? An example that flew to mind, at another Nottinghamshire venue, was Liverpool's Luis Suarez handling the ball in an FA Cup tie against Mansfield and then walking it into the net. At first, Suarez was excoriated as a villain. Then some claimed that it was the duty of the three match officials to see the offence, not the player to own up. Most ex-players at Trent Bridge saw this as a particularly flagrant example of an ingrained habit, ie not walking.
Of course Dar should have seen it. Of course Australia should have had a review left to ensure justice. And of course Broad should have walked, in the strictly moral sense, rather than staying to score 10 more runs and help strengthen England's hold on this first Test. In the age of match and spot fixing, though, we already knew cricket is no Utopia.
If there was ever a true Spirit of Cricket, it took the day off at Trent Bridge when Stuart Broad blatantly nicked a delivery to first slip but chose not to walk. Social media erupted with an amazing array of verdicts, ranging from cheat to sensible, from skulduggery to understandable opportunism.
Not for the first time the argument veered off in the direction of moral equivalence. Would an Australian batsman say he would walk in those circumstances? If no, presumably, the problem goes away because we are all as cynical as each other. If yes, the Aussies are telling porkies. A vital moral question soon became another Ashes bunfight.
Temperatures were already running high here from the Jonathan Trott dismissal the day before. Not that personal rectitude was at stake when a not-out lbw call against Trott was overturned, despite Hot Spot being unavailable. That decision by Marais Erasmus, the third umpire, cast doubt on the protocols for the use of technology.
But it was an arcane procedural argument compared to the furore over Broad, which was witnessed by millions on television and unleashed a kind of Twitter hell. Watching Broad stand his ground after Aleem Dar had failed to hear or see a thick edge off an Ashton Agar delivery was Darren Lehmann, the Australia coach, who played in the game made famous by Adam Gilchrist's walk, 10 years ago, in a semi-final against Sri Lanka of the Cricket World Cup. Gilchrist is the starting point on walking, which is defined as "the act of a batsman giving himself out, without waiting for an umpire's decision".
In his autobiography, which he even called Walking to Victory, Gilchrist recalled the moment an Aravinda de Silva ball popped off his bat and into the wicketkeeper's gloves. "Then, to see the umpire shaking his head, meaning, 'Not out', gave me the strangest feeling," Gilchrist wrote. "I don't recall what my exact thoughts were, but somewhere in the back of my mind, all that history from the Ashes series was swirling around. Michael Vaughan, Nasser Hussain and other batsmen, both in my team and against us, who had stood their ground in those "close" catching incidents were definitely a factor in what happened in the following seconds. "I had spent all summer wondering if it was possible to take ownership of these incidents and still be successful. I had wondered what I would do. I was about to find out. The voice in my head was emphatic. Go. Walk. And I did. "It was a really weird sensation to go against the grain of what 99 per cent of cricketers do these days, and what we've been doing for our whole careers. I was annoyed because I felt like I was batting well and had the chance to lay the foundation for a big team score - and it was me taking that away from myself." Some hailed Gilchrist as a groundbreaker. But everyone knows many in his team were livid, and turned on him, for a supposedly needless show of honesty.
Ethics aside, the counter-case against Gilchrist's noble act was he had performed the umpire's job for him when his real obligation was to help Australia win the match. He described his team-mates as "flabbergasted" but said: "I kept going back to the fact that, well, at the end of the day, I had been honest with myself. I felt it was time that players made a stand to take back responsibility for the game. I was at ease with that. The more I thought about it, the more settled I became with what I'd done." The heart soars to read this. But we know it does not correspond to the modern world of sport. Michael Clarke, the Australia captain, who took the Broad catch, has himself apologised for not walking in a match (he was dismissed on review). Similarly it could be argued that Clarke frittered away his reviews and was thus unable to challenge Aleem Dar's inexplicable failure to see that Broad was out.
An absorbing moral ping-pong match ensued. What if it had been the thinnest of edges instead of a thick one? Was it the obviousness of deflection that stained Broad's reputation? Should we expect one man to walk if he has seen countless others stand their ground? An example that flew to mind, at another Nottinghamshire venue, was Liverpool's Luis Suarez handling the ball in an FA Cup tie against Mansfield and then walking it into the net. At first, Suarez was excoriated as a villain. Then some claimed that it was the duty of the three match officials to see the offence, not the player to own up. Most ex-players at Trent Bridge saw this as a particularly flagrant example of an ingrained habit, ie not walking.
Of course Dar should have seen it. Of course Australia should have had a review left to ensure justice. And of course Broad should have walked, in the strictly moral sense, rather than staying to score 10 more runs and help strengthen England's hold on this first Test. In the age of match and spot fixing, though, we already knew cricket is no Utopia.
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