Gannon talks cricket

11:21am Wednesday 2nd July 2008

Comments (0)   Have your say »

WHAT a week for Paul Collingwood and England! Not only loosing the one-day series 3-1 to New Zealand, but also challenging those all so important morals of sportsmanship as outlined in the Spirit of Cricket'. So to the run out, what would you have done?

Having not seen the incident I have found it hard to answer this question, but would like to think that common sense prevailed. Had it been a genuine collision I would have cancelled the appeal.

In the event that the batsman had run across the natural line of the bowler I would have upheld the appeal. Certainly the majority sees Collingwood as the villain who with hindsight saw the error of his ways and to compound his misery was handed a four match suspension for slow over rates.

However, New Zealand has no cause to reach for the moral high ground as they have a number of immoral skeletons in their cupboard.

Anyone remember the run out of Muralitharan as he went to congratulate Sangakkara on reaching a ton? And what about sledging' and not walking'? Surely these are outside the parameters of the spirit of cricket'.

All sports are played within the rules of the game but with the greater financial rewards on offer these rules are being pushed to the limits, and sometimes beyond. With 20million dollar matches on the horizon (what a great time to be a professional cricketer) the laws need to be scrutinised and regulated so that these incidents do not occur and it is the officials who are left to decide on these potentially grey areas.