Nothing Wrong In Jos Butler's Mankading

So England are all upset about Sri Lankan bowler Sachithra Senanayake Mankading England batsman Jos Butler in the final one day match. Do they have a legitimate grievance?

I don’t believe so. Butler had already been warned twice in the same innings by the same bowler. How much more should the fielding team have had to put up with?

The term Mankading – the bowler running a non-striking batsman out for backing up too far – was coined after Indian bowler Vinoo Mankad did it to Australian batsman Bill Brown in the 1947 Sydney test.

The law was originally that the non-striking batsman must be in his crease as the bowler delivers the ball. If he is not, the bowler is entitled to run him out. About 15 years ago, the law was changed so that the bowler could not run the batsman out after he had entered his delivery stride. In 2011, it was changed back to its original form.

Etiquette is that the batsman is first given a warning, which in practice consists of the bowler stopping, then either running the batsman out but not appealing, or threatening to take the bails off, but allowing the batsman to regain his ground. If, after being warned, the batsman continues excessively backing up (thus gaining an unfair advantage), it’s fair game to run him out.

How many warnings does a batsman deserve before the fielding team decides he’s taking too much liberty and actually runs him out? Should each batsman first get a warning, or does warning one batsman count as a general warning? Does being warned in one match, or even actually being run out count as being warned for all future matches? If so, for how long? The series? The season? One would hardly think “I warned you back in 2004, so you should have known” to be fair conduct.

The Vinoo Mankad Wikipedia link above contains the newspaper report from the time. Mankad had warned Bill Brown in a previous match, then actually run him out. He then ran him out without further warning in the Sydney test. There were complaints that Mankad should have again warned Brown prior to running him out in the test, with undercurrents that it wasn’t the sort of thing a decent white man would do … and at the time it probably wasn’t.

Most Australians (and Englishmen and New Zealanders) would have first given Brown another warning. This is where cultural differences come into it. Mankad clearly thought the previous run out was sufficient warning for the rest of the series. It’s hard to definitively fault him. Australian captain, Don Bradman stuck up for him.

What level of warning is appropriate before Mankading a batsman?

A bowler should definitely let the batsman off with a warning the first time they catch them. I think the most important thing is to make clear to the opposition what the warning means and this is where Mankad probably went a little awry.

If a batsman is actually run out after previously being warned, the bowler or captain should let the opposition know that there will be no more warnings for the match, or for the series, if that is their intention. Alternatively, if multiple batsmen have been warned, the fielding captain could say: “Right, you’re all doing it. No more warnings for anyone.” Then everybody knows the unwritten rules as well as the official ones.

As long as the rules of engagement are made clear in advance, batsmen can hardly make credible complaints if they ignore them. Australian captain Michael Clarke agreed, stating “as long as the player is warned … “

This is what happened in the recent England v Sri Lanka game. Sachithra Senanayake had twice stopped in his delivery stride and warned Jos Butler. Butler ignored the warnings and eventually the Sri Lankans became fed up and ran him out. What’s the problem here? Butler deserved it.

Here’s some Youtube footage which clearly shows the warning and subsequent run out. At 0.03 into the footage, you can see Butler a few inches out of his crease even before the bowler enters his delivery stride (which for a right handed bowler would be when he pushes off his right foot). Senanayake stops and warns Butler. At 0.12, we can see Butler is again clearly a few inches out of his crease even as the bowler passes the umpire, well before his delivery stride. Senanayake stops and this time runs Butler out.

There was commentary in the English press that because Butler was “hardly trying to steal a single”, the Sri Lankans should have withdrawn the appeal. Meaning what? That it would have been a third warning? And if he kept on doing it?

The difference between a batsman being run out or safe is often inches, so Butler’s excessive backing up really was giving him an advantage. Certainly, the Sri Lankans felt that Butler and Ravi Bopara abused etiquette in their stand at Lord’s. So why should they have continued to put up with it? The England batsmen were doing it deliberately and their protests after being caught out are hypocritical.

The only time I’ve seen a batsman Mankaded without warning was Australian fast bowler Alan Hurst’s run out of Pakistani tailender Sikander Bakht in the 1979 Perth test. I remember seeing it live on TV. In this case, the action’s intent was more nasty than it was grubby. It was an excessive response to an escalating sequence of incidents in what had been a spiteful series, including allegations of ball tampering against Sarfraz Nawaz and Imran Khan – later largely confirmed. Hurst’s body language at the time seemed to convey to the Pakistanis a final “Fuck off, you greasy cunts!”, although Mankading wasn’t the way to send that message.

The larger problem with this incident was stand-in Australian captain Andrew Hilditch’s failure to withdraw the appeal and recall Bakht. In retaliation, it led to one of test cricket’s most unedifying acts of grubbery from one of its biggest grubs. In Australia’s second innings run chase, Andrew Hilditch was given out handled ball for picking it up and throwing it back to the bowler after Sarfraz appealed and Pakistani captain Mushtaq Mohammad refused to withdraw it.

That incident really did lay bare cultural differences. The handled ball appeal was not something an Anglo-Saxon player would have done, not due to DNA, but culture. Thinking that such behaviour is reasonable retaliation can only come from a culture in which cheating is the currency of everyday transactions and acts of grubby bastardry are commonplace, which they are in most of Asia. Hurst’s Mankading of Bakht was also bastardry, however Safraz’s appeal is clearly an order of magnitude worse.

If England want to have a go at the Sri Lankans for something, make an issue of Senanayake’s dodgy bowling action. Mahela Jayawardene had a whinge that people had found fault with Senanayake’s action, implying that Sri Lanka are being picked on.

The truth is that once Muttiah Muralitharan got away with chucking, partly due to white racial cringe, a whole generation of sub-continental players, Sri Lankans in particular began copying their idol. So, it’s hardly surprising that most suspect actions are those of sub-continental bowlers. By a remarkable coincidence, they are all brown people.

So yes, brown people are being disproportionately accused of chucking. But that’s not because they are brown per se. It’s because their bowling actions are dodgy due to them identifying with and hence copying the original culprit, who happens to be a brown person. This is what needs to be said to sub-continental players and officials when they almost invariably play the race card as a defence to legitimate questions about many of their bowlers’ actions.

Update: It appears the ICC has finally seen what was instantly obvious to most people watching and banned Senanayake for chucking.