Filed under: Cricket, England Cricket, Tests, India Cricket
The Indians walked down the pavilion steps at Trent Bridge to jeers from the assembled English cricket fans. Moments later, Ian Bell descended to resume his innings. Now the jeers turned to cheers.None within the ground seemed to know what had occurred during the tea interval after Bell's run out, on the last ball before the break, had been confirmed by the giant scoreboard within the ground. Fans, kept waiting for the resumption of play, could only speculate.
Those of us watching at home were given some insight by the TV pundits but even they were not really the wiser until a plethora of press releases hit them later, from the governing bodies of both teams and various cricketing administrative concerns.
It seems to be one of the tenets of modern sport: you charge punters top dollar actually to attend events but then keep them in the dark. Sometimes, you feel you are better off at home finding things out, which should not be how it is with all the technology around today and if sports keep expecting people to turn up in their droves to pay for it all.
How often, for example, do you go to a football match and get treated to a pre-match show on screen and public address system selling you everything from cars to merchandise to tickets for the next game? The trouble is that the announcer often neglects to give you the teams when they should be read out every 15 minutes, at least, once they have been handed in to the referee 45 minutes before kick-off.
(And, by the way, bravo Arsenal - who seem in need of the odd crumb of comfort these days - for showing Arsene Wenger on their screens before games announcing his team selection to the fans).
In the case of Trent Bridge, it should not have been beyond the wit of the powers that be to have explained to the paying public exactly what was happening.
Clearly by the time the Indians took the field after the tea interval, a decision had been made. Surely an announcement could also have been made: Ladies and gentleman, following discussions between the two teams, the India captain MS Dhoni decided to withdraw his team's run-out appeal and Ian Bell has been reinstated by the two umpires.
That way, the temporary anger towards the Indian side could have been averted and the crowd instead would have accorded them the applause befitting their act of sportsmanship.
So often these days, teams, clubs and governing bodies are more concerned by how they appear to a wider public. Hence those swift press releases.
Hence, indeed, Dhoni's decision. Bell was out and none could have blamed the Indian captain for insisting the decision be upheld despite the questionable representations of the England captain Andrew Strauss and coach Andy Flower. This is Test cricket, after all; it is meant to be a hard school.
Dhoni realised, however, the vilification his side would receive - at a time when India is being perceived as too politically powerful in world cricket - if he did not change his mind. That might well in turn have engendered a counter-productive mood as his side sought to turn the series around.
Thus was it partly for public relations reasons that Bell was fortuitously allowed to continue. It was a shame that the game's authorities could not have reacted more effectively at Trent Bridge and shown better public relations themselves to the people who matter most - those forking out the modern day fortunes it takes to afford a ticket for the weekend of a Test match in England.
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Source: http://www.fanhouse.co.uk/2011/08/01/ian-bell-cricket-trent-bridge/
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