The Great Indian Sledgers

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Sledging is the practice in cricket of insulting opponents to break their concentration and cause them to make mistakes. Sledging is effective because the batsman stands within hearing range of the bowler and certain fielders. The aim is to intimidate or distract the batsman into making a fatal mistake and being dismissed. Sledging thus tries to “break the flow” of the batsman’s game. There is debate in the cricketing world over whether this is poor sportsmanship or good-humoured banter.

I call this ‘Verbal Abuse’.

This is an art which the Australians are well-versed with. No sooner did they land in India for the Future Cup in 2007 than Ricky Ponting & Co. started lashing their tongues at us. The first one came from the captain himself when he said that the feat of winning the Twenty20 world cup a few weeks back was actually a history. Then during the ODIs Andrew Symonds, Matthew Hayden and Micheal Clarke went a little ahead by pointing their bats at the Indian bowlers.

I’m very much proud of the present generation of Indian cricketers namely, Bhajji, Sree and Robin. They subdued the kangaroos by matching them at sledging skills. Hats off to Sreesanth who showed the Australians their true class. If they want to play cricket like this then we know how to answer fire with fire.

Even before the start of Indo-Oz series 2007, Down Under, the former Australian coach, John Buchhanan, started verbal abuse by targeting Sachin Tendulkar. From the Indian camp Harbhajan retorted by saying that Brad Hogg is not good enough a spinner and stands nowhere in the likes of Warne and MacGill.

The generation of Indian cricketers has changed and along with answering the remarks thrown at them by the opponents with bat and ball, they return the same with verbal abuse as bonus.

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Tags: Australia, Cricket, India, Sledging