Its the sportsmanship in which the sport is played....Thats where i think countries and their staff should focus their minds on....be it cricket or whatever....nowadays competition is given a new name -- WINNING !!
"Come hail, come storm, we will win ... even if it means stamping over the other team" -- thats what is inculcated amongst players right now..
I am not sure how many of the readers are ardent followers or cricket. But the recent India-Australia match gave us a glimpse of things to follow. If this is not taken care of at this very moment, we could be in for a very purple patch in sports era..
The spirit in which the game is played is all what matters...winning and losing come after that. Everyone likes winning but if it becomes a habit, thats when things can turn upside down. The criticism the players get is immense after the game is over.
Another very famous example is the underarm bowling by Australia in 1981
In 1981 Australia was playing New Zealand in a One Day International, the third of five matches in the final of the Benson & Hedges World Series Cup at the Melbourne Cricket Ground.
New Zealand needed six runs to tie the match from the final ball, with eight wickets down. The Australian captain (Greg Chappell) ordered the bowler (his brother, Trevor Chappell) to bowl underarm: rolling the ball along the ground to avoid the possibility that the No. 10 New Zealand batsman (Brian McKechnie) would score a six from the last ball to tie the match.
Australia won the game, but boos were heard from the crowd and the New Zealand batsmen marched off in disgust. Since that day the underarm bowling incident has been a source of discussion, both heated and jocular, between Australians and New Zealanders.
It was described as "the most disgusting incident I can recall in the history of cricket" by the then Prime Minister of New Zealand, Rob Muldoon, who also said that "It was an act of cowardice and I consider it appropriate that the Australian team were wearing yellow".
On February 17, 2005, 24 years after the original underarm delivery, Australian fast bowler Glenn McGrath light-heartedly revisited the incident in the first ever Twenty20 international, played between Australia and New Zealand. In the last over of the match, a grinning McGrath pretended to bowl an underarm delivery to Kyle Mills which prompted New Zealand umpire Billy Bowden to produce a mock red card. This drew a large reception from the crowd, which was mostly made up of New Zealand fans, and echoed the good spirits in which the whole game had been played.
Sportsmanship can be conceptualized as an enduring and relatively stable characteristic or disposition such that individuals differ in the way they are generally expected to behave in sport situations. In general, sportsmanship refers to virtues such as fairness, self-control, courage and persistence and has been associated with interpersonal concepts of treating others and being treated fairly, maintaining self-control in dealing with others, and respect for both authority and opponents. Five facets of sportsmanship have been identified:
- Full commitment to participation (e.g., showing up, working hard during all practices and games, acknowledging one’s mistakes and trying to improve)
- Respect and concern for rules and officials
- Respect and concern for social conventions (e.g., shaking hands, recognizing the good performance of an opponent)
- Respect and concern for the opponent (e.g., lending one’s equipment to the opponent, agreeing to play even if the opponent is late, not taking advantage of injured opponents)
- Avoiding poor attitudes toward participation (e.g., not adopting a win-at-all-costs approach, not showing temper after a mistake, and not competing solely for individual prizes)
I do not know what will happen if things go like this, but I am sure they will be better if we stop it right away..
Enjoy reading
Sanx
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