The Sweet Taste of Success Is No Secret

In the week when South African captain skipper Faf Du Plessis was fined his entire match fee for applying an artificial substance to the ball, I sought clarification on the matter from the renowned cricket expert Mr ‘Citizen’ Khan and his short instructional film entitled Mr Khan’s Laws Of Cricket – Ball Tampering.

Listing the dos and don’ts of acceptable treatment of the cricket ball, Mr Khan informs us that the following practices are strictly forbidden: using the bottle top of your favourite refreshment to scratch the surface of the ball – “very naughty”, applying sun cream directly to the ball from the tube, using beeswax spray and a duster to polish it and, of course, biting it like your lunchtime tomato.

And he finishes his message by stressing, with appropriate props to demonstrate: “No scouring of the ball… no potato-peeling of the ball”, and finally, bellowing to make himself heard above the din of the power tool in his hands, “DEFINITELY NO SANDING OF THE BALL”.

Mr Khan (aka comedian Adil Ray) makes no mention of the list of proscribed substances soon to be compiled by the ICC following their punishment of Du Plessis for shining the ball with saliva while eating a sweet, probably because, from Murray Mints to jelly babies to chewing gum to sherbet lemons and the contents of Jamboree Bumper Fun Bags, it would take the rest of all our lives to do so.

But, I ask you. With so many other more pressing matters to attend to concerning the health of the game worldwide, this reaction by its governing body does seem to amount to a load of faf about nothing, even though Du Plessis admitted the fuss had “taken all the shine off” what his side had achieved own under.

Not only was he convinced he had done nothing wrong, but merely using standard and widely accepted practices to encourage both conventional, but primarily reverse-swing, his position was supported by his opposite number, Australia’s Steve Smith.