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The Mankad: It’s just not cricket?

Ian Anderson ian.anderson@stuff.co.nz

Having something in sport named after you is usually a matter of immense pride. The Fosbury Flop, the Cruyff turn, the Ali Shuffle, the Panenka penalty, the Lutz, Axel and Salchow jumps – all celebrate moments of innovation and brilliance.

Vinoo Mankad, however, has gone down in sporting history by having his name inextricably linked to cricket’s most controversial method of dismissal.

The simmering debate that swirls around the ‘Mankad’ erupted again this week when Indian spin bowler Deepti Sharma ran out England’s non-striking batter Charlie Dean to hand the visitors a series-sweep ODI victory at Lord’s.

Sharma saw Dean leaving her crease before the ball had been delivered – regularly during the game as displayed later – and halted her bowling action to knock off the bails. Sharma said Dean had been warned about trying to steal a run, but England’s regular captain – who wasn’t playing that match – said India were lying.

The method of dismissal has always been legitimate as part of the Laws of Cricket but also the subject of endless arguments about whether it goes against the spirit of the game.

Yet it’s no longer regarded as ‘unfair play’ by the International Cricket Council and the MCC after recently being shifted to the ‘run out’ category.

That’s scant consolation to Mankad, who died in 1978, when the label for the method of dismissal was already recognised worldwide.

But the tactic had been used for more than a century before the great Indian allrounder twice ran out Australian opener Bill Brown that way.

Thomas Barker was a renowned fast bowler in England, both overarm and underarm, for almost a decade during the Victorian era.

Wisden reported William Denison wrote of Barker’s bowling: ‘‘So violent was it, that he sometimes

Wisden, circa 1840s

ran up to the crease and propelled his instrument of attack as though his head would follow the ball.’’

In 1835, he dismissed George Baigent of Sussex by running him out at the non-striker’s end when bowling.

Barker, an amateur player, did it four more times over the next eight years, with the last taking place at ‘The Home of Cricket’ at Lord’s in London when playing for the MCC. His playing career ended when he was injured in an accident with a horse-drawn cab, but he went on to umpire 70 first-class games.

Wisden reported that a book of cricket instructions published two years later featured an illustration of the incident, warning nonstrikers ‘‘too anxious to obtain a run’’.

‘‘It is dangerous to leave your ground before you are well convinced that the bowler is not watching your over anxiety.’’

There were 16 other recorded instances of it happening again – mostly in England, New Zealand and Australia – before Mankad ran out Brown when bowling against an Australian XI side prior to the second test in 1947. Bill Hendley did it twice in consecutive seasons in New Zealand, bowling for Otago in the mid-1860s.

Eton captain George Harris ran out Conrad Wallroth of Harrow in that manner in 1870 at Lord’s. He would later become Lord Harris, and Kent and England captain. Four seasons before Mankad hit the headlines, Ray Allen ran out John Smith when bowling for Wellington against Canterbury. When India played their first test series in Australia in 1947-48, Mankad was their best player and the country’s first cricketing star, standing out not only for his brilliance with bat and ball but with his well-oiled back-brushed hair. Due to World War II, Mulvantrai Himmatlal ‘Vinoo’ Mankad didn’t make his test debut until he was 29. The series against Australia was just his second after three tests in England the previous year.

It was an inauspicious start for the tourists – they were beaten by an innings and 226 runs in the first test in Brisbane, when Don Bradman made 185 and India were dismissed for 58 and 98. Mankad took a meritorious 3-113 from 34 overs in Australia’s only turn at bat, but made a golden duck opening in India’s first innings and just seven in the second.

Prior to the second test in Sydney, India played an Australian XI and Mankad ran out Brown, who was ‘backing up’ out of his crease – apparently after warning him prior.

In the second test in Sydney, he repeated the dismissal in Australia’s first innings when Brown had made 18 from 56 balls.

Apparently Mankad hadn’t warned Brown in the test – the previous match’s incident should have been warning enough – but Brown still threw his bat in annoyance at the manner of his exit.

Legend has it that Brown’s opening partner Arthur Morris did alert him to the danger: ‘‘Look out BB, you are doing the same thing again.’’

Mankad explained to a Brisbane journalist that as a leftarm spinner, Brown leaving his crease was distracting him as he was ‘‘half-face on to the moving Brown when the ball leaves his hand’’.

‘‘My reflective vision becomes affected and my bowling concentration suffers,’’ Mankad said.

‘‘I had warned Brown in Sydney [in the Aus XI game] not to leave the non-striker’s popping crease until the ball had left my hand, but Brown ignored the warning.’’

Much of Australia weren’t riled by the method of dismissal – former legendary spin bowler and then journalist Bill O’Reilly wrote: ‘‘Mankad subscribed to the ethical rule . . . Brown was at fault’’ while Bradman later penned: ‘‘There was absolutely no feeling in the matter as

Vinoo Mankad explains his actions

far as we were concerned, for we considered it quite a legitimate part of the game.’’

Letters to the Sydney Morning Herald criticised not Mankad but Brown, both for his error in leaving the crease early, and his petulant reaction.

Mankad went on to have a superb test career – it took him only 23 tests to achieve the double of scoring 1000 runs and taking 100 wickets, a mark not surpassed until Ian Botham did so in 1979.

He scored a century and took five wickets in an innings in a test at Lord’s and for more than five decades held the world record opening stand in tests of 413 with his partner Pankaj Roy. Mankad’s contribution of 231 in that game against New Zealand in Chennai in January 1956 was the highest individual innings for India until Sunil Gavaskar surpassed it in 1983.

He became one of the highest paid cricketers in the world in the early 1950s, the Telegraph UK wrote this week, earning more than a thousand pounds a season when playing for Haslingden in the Lancashire league. Mankad was India’s greatest all-rounder until Kapil Dev emerged in the late 1970s – Dev, near the end of his career, ‘Mankaded’ South Africa’s Peter Kirsten in a one-day international.

The method of dismissal continued to pop up occasionally in first-class cricket over the next two decades, but the next occurrence in tests came in Adelaide in 1969 by Charlie Griffith of the West Indies against Australian Ian Redpath.

The Age newspaper report described it as ‘‘pulled a ‘Vinoo Mankad’’’ and when the home side’s Greg Chappell ran out Brian Luckhurst in an ODI at the MCG at the start of 1975, it was noted in the press – inaccurately – that ‘‘Mankad started the fad’’.

But the method of dismissal was becoming less acceptable – Australia’s Alan Hurst ran out Pakistan tailender Sikander Bakht in a test in Perth in 1979 and the touring side were so incensed that in the following innings when Australian opener Andrew Hilditch picked up a ball and returned it to the bowler, Sarfraz Nawaz, the bowler appealed for handled the ball and Hilditch was given out.

The ‘Mankad’ has continued to pop up in domestic and international cricket – none more bizarrely so than when 16-year-old Maeva Douma used it four times for the Cameroon women’s team against Uganda last year.

Former Indian great Gavaskar apparently believed the method of dismissal should have always been known as ‘‘Browned’’ – because the Australian opener was the player at fault. One of Mankad’s sons, Rahul, became a fierce campaigner to the MCC against the use of the term.

It’s a righteous grievance for many reasons outlined above – the legal but equally controversial underarm delivery was not known as a ‘‘Chappell’’ after 1981 before it was outlawed, while a catch after the ball has hit the ground isn’t known as ‘‘doing a Dyer’’.

When Mankad ran out Brown, India had just gained independence. But international cricket was run by the Imperial Cricket Conference, formed in 1909 by representatives from Australia, England and South Africa, and it wasn’t until 1965 that ‘Imperial’ was replaced by ‘International’.

While it’s inevitable the tactic will never be called ‘‘Browned’’, those who feel Mankad has been unfairly labelled for over 75 years may witness the term fading from use due to law changes.

‘‘It is dangerous to leave your ground before you are well convinced that the bowler is not watching your over anxiety.’’

‘‘My reflective vision becomes affected and my bowling concentration suffers.’’

Sport

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2022-10-01T07:00:00.0000000Z

2022-10-01T07:00:00.0000000Z

https://fairfaxmedia.pressreader.com/article/282316798918421

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