Cricket has laws, rather than rules, which might explain why someone suspected of breaking them can become the subject of an extra-judicial lynch mob. Last month’s North Yorkshire and South Durham Cricket League’s Division Two game between the second elevens of Saltburn and Norton would normally struggle to make headlines in the Northern Echo. But thanks to video footage of Brian Devine, Saltburn’s 38-year-old slip fielder, apparently clicking his fingers as the ball sailed harmlessly past the outside edge – thereby fooling the umpire into giving the batsman out caught behind – the match has become famous across the world.
Newspaper readers from Melbourne to Mumbai have piled in below the line (and, sometimes, below the belt) to demand the fielder’s head. Online sleuths have revealed that Saltburn’s wicketkeeper has claimed a suspicious number of ‘catches’ while standing next to this slippery slip, prompting previous opponents to claim similar unfair dismissals. The original footage has been viewed more than seven million times. Devine has gained the moniker of ‘Clicky Ponting’, a reference to the hard-nosed former Australian captain. Last week, he was suspended by his club for his foreseeable future, pending the outcome of an investigation.
Why has Clickgate provided so much delicious clickbait? Why might Devine have done it? And how had the fidgety fielder apparently got away with it until now? The obvious answer to the first question is that the alleged incidents offend our sense of fair play, the amorphous, much-vaunted ‘spirit of the game’. Footballers dive. Rugby players gouge. But we cricketers clap in the new batsman, walk when we’ve nicked it and praise the cucumber sandwich-making skills of the opposition.
In the Hampshire village where I play occasional Sunday cricket, we’re gentlemanly to a fault. Fast bowlers are replaced with harmless dibbly-dobblers if we start tearing through the middle order too quickly. Teammates are sledged mercilessly, but never the other side. If first slip started clicking his fingers, he’d probably dislocate them – and if I was behind the stumps, I’d be so distracted that I’d let yet another ball through my legs for four runs.
Footballers dive. Rugby players gouge. But we cricketers clap in the new batsman
At this level, at least, much of the ‘spirit’ of cricket is alive and well. And although it’s not quite Eldorado, minor disputes tend to be resolved good-humouredly, without resorting to viral videos and official inquiries. ‘Howzat?!’ yelled our team one Sunday, when the opposition’s opener had clearly edged one behind. ‘Not out,’ said the umpire, who happened to be the batsman’s friend. ‘It hit his leg.’ ‘He runs well between the wickets for someone with a wooden leg,’ came the reply from the covers.
The Authors XI, for whom I’ve also played, once took on a team of doctors. One of their batsmen was so livid about being given out caught (correctly), despite his shot rebounding off his partner’s bat, that the Authors relented and allowed him to stay in. He chuntered his way to an angry 50, whereupon he was clean-bowled. ‘Would it be OK if you were out this time?’ came the polite inquiry from the fielder who had caught him earlier.
However, these confrontations tend to emerge from a heat-of-the-moment misunderstanding, rather than a deliberate, premeditated attempt to break the laws. Only Clicky Ponting will know why – or indeed if – he did it, and whether he deserves all this opprobrium, a sacrificial not-quite lamb to maintain the perceived purity of the game. But it’s fun to guess, isn’t it?
Pace Wallace Sayre, I imagine that the amateur second division of the North Yorkshire and South Durham Cricket League is often quite vicious, precisely because the stakes are so low. It’s not Sunday cricket, but neither is it the first division, let alone the County Championship. At every level of cricket, it’s always a fine line between gamesmanship and cheating. There are many ways to push your luck: pretending a Kiwi ringer on his gap year is the farmer’s nephew; distracting a fielder lining up a catch; confusing the batsmen’s calls.
Was Douglas Jardine a hero or a villain when he captained the ‘Bodyline’ Ashes series in 1932? Was Alex Carey’s stumping of Johnny Bairstow in the 2023 Ashes fair? It depends on whether you ask a sensible Englishman or a sun-crazed, competitive Australian. Most people, however, agree on when the line has been crossed. Clickgate is in the same tradition as Sandpapergate, the ball-tampering scandal in 2018 that led to the tearful resignation of Steve Smith, the Australian captain. So, perhaps we shouldn’t be too surprised when scandals erupt in cricket.
The only unanswerable question in this saga is how Clicky Ponting honed his impressive technique in the slips. Clicking your fingers at the precise moment a cricket ball passes an outside edge requires (I imagine) extraordinary concentration. Do it too early, too late, too obviously or too often and you reveal your hand. With timing that good, he should have been opening the batting for Saltburn’s first XI.
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