Creating the right impression

It was sad to see a player of Schalk Burger’s standing with the South African rugby public being hauled in front of a disciplinary committee, but it was right that it was done.

However frustrated Burger may have felt at the yellow card he received in the Stormers/Sharks match, and right now the assistant referee Willie Roos, who was the target of Burger’s gesticulating, is not the flavour of the month in the Cape, his reaction to it was over the top.

I don’t know what Burger might have argued in mitigation. From the vantage point of the ABSA Stadium press box Burger appeared to be having a real go at Roos. It didn’t look from where I was sitting like he was chatting to someone in the stands, perhaps asking them to meet him for a drink afterwards.

The problem is that what Burger was doing just sends out the wrong message to the millions of youngsters to whom he is a role-model. And his little tizzy fit was all too similar to something that has irked me for a long time now while indulging in one of my favourite past-times of watching cricket on television.

We all know that umpires often make mistakes. Some batsmen have been given some really rough decisions down the years, and when they are, you can hardly blame them if they walk back to the pavilion shaking their heads.

But it gets overdone. Too often I see batsmen who are quite clearly out plumb lbw or who have offered a thick edge to the ball on its way through to the wicket-keeper shaking their heads and behaving like spoilt kids.

Of course, there are fines for this sort of thing, but somehow it just seems to be more prevalent today than it used to be. That this is so is probably because of the all-pervading nature of the television coverage, and my irritation extends to far more than just the batsman’s reaction to being given out.

Old timers tell me that Mike Procter was a champion sledger, and I know that Clive Rice used to have some choice words to batsmen as they came out to face him. But somehow, from where I was sitting in the stands, it was never as obvious when I was a boy as some of the sledging and snarling is when it is picked up on television today.

When I once saw Vince van der Bijl, after facing two savage bouncers from Rice at Kingsmead, throw his bat down the pitch, I assumed he was joking. But if it happened now we would have cause to wonder, for somehow the humour appears to have been taken out of the gentleman’s game.

I used to enjoy Andre Nel, I thought his aggression brought a new dimension to the Proteas attack. But just lately, perhaps because of over-exposure and because his routine has become so predictable, he has started to become too much. For goodness sake, if a batsman hits you for four, he is only doing what he was selected into his team to do.

And running past a batsman who has just been bowled and giving him a send-off just smacks of cowardice as it is not as if that batsman is going to be able to respond.

Those who watch a lot of school cricket tell me that the habits picked up off television are sneaking into the game at that level, with sledging and dissent with umpire decisions becoming more prevalent. I can well understand why this happens, because when I was at school I thought of myself as a clone of Van der Bijl, and when I appealed for lbw, which was just about every ball, the roar could be heard two blocks away.

The youngsters of today are as impressionable as we were. The message that is sent out must be the right one. If it is watching men remonstrating and arguing with referees that floats your boat, then you ought to be watching British football, or a video of John McEnroe's worst moments at Wimbledon, not rugby union.