I am delighted that the ICC has decided to crackdown on on-field behaviour. It has been late coming but as we so delightfully say in Hindi “der aaye par durust aaye”! Now, we need to see how the thought translates into action. If it is well done, as the manner in which bent arm bowling was removed from the game, it will make cricket richer. For, as we know, straight arm finger spin bowling, as recently seen from Nathan Lyon and Moeen Ali, can be wonderful to watch.

Similarly too, I hope people realise that it is possible to play hard and fair cricket (to use a term whose meaning has been much abused!) without abusing each other or looking loutish. The greatness of sport, and I would like to believe its original intent, was to try your best to win, give no quarter, then shake hands and acknowledge the winner at the end. But cricket is being hijacked by verbal, as opposed to cricketing, confrontation. There were many great players, and there are many, who were tough and uncompromising but never cheap and loutish in their behaviour. India, who have recently been guilty of getting into scraps too, have a wonderful tradition of exemplary behaviour with Kumble, Tendulkar, Dravid, Dhoni and many others. Hashim Amla and AB de Villiers win well enough without feeling the need to abuse. And Chris Gayle bowing to de Villiers was a wonderful gesture which didn’t dilute his desire to win a cricket match.

I am sometimes told that people like seeing abuse and confrontation; that it spices the game up. Cricket is wonderfully nuanced already without needing to surrender to such unhealthy spice. And if that is indeed the reason to watch cricket, then what next? A punch-up? Let’s be serious about this. We are not too far away from it. Some of the body language, let alone actual language, has been filthy and it won’t surprise me at all if there is a brawl and a punch-up. When tempers flare, common sense is trampled upon. We see that in traffic.

The Big Three of cricket simply have to take the lead because they seem to figure in these confrontations more often than others. Within them, I’m afraid Cricket Australia needs to wake up to it the most because some of the statements emerging from those that manage their teams are very dangerous and suggestive that verbal abuse is fine. Australia’s approach to the actual playing of the game has enriched cricket greatly and is worthy of huge admiration but their embrace of abuse is worrisome. England too, I thought, let themselves and the game down by not coming down hard on Jimmy Anderson a few months ago and India have to stop the new found willingness to scrap verbally now. Not tomorrow, but today.

I have long advocated the use of yellow and red cards in our game. Fining people isn’t working and we now have a ridiculous situation where a good man (George Bailey) is suspended for slow rates and someone whose behaviour Martin Crowe called “thuggish” (Warner) gets away with a fine. The moment players know they have to miss out, and run the risk of losing their place to whoever takes it, they will focus on enriching the game with their ability.

Point system

But recently, I was introduced to a line of thinking, that I believe could work even better. In a conversation with Damien Martyn in our studio, he suggested a points system be introduced in much the manner it is in some countries with driving licenses. Every misdemeanour costs you some points and the moment you pass a pre-decided number you start getting suspended. His view was that if a player knows he could be out of the game for three months, he will be more aware of what he is up to. Would Warner have behaved the way he did if he feared he could, for example, miss a World Cup if he had already accumulated enough bad points?

I think it could work. Like a driving licence, each player has a docket and going into each match, each player knows where he stands on that. The umpires and the referee could allocate those points because if we can trust them with match changing judgements we should trust them with on-field misbehaviour. And most of the umpires I know prefer to let the game go on, they are not primary school headmasters waiting to pull people up. They are perfectly capable of judging between on field banter, even tough words spoken, and rowdyish behaviour with abusive language.

The time has come. The World Cup is a definitive landmark. Just as the blatant violation of fair actions at the World T20 acted as the catalyst for cleaning up actions, so too should the Jadeja-Anderson, the Starc-Pollard and the India-Australia confrontations act as the tipping point for a cleansing of the game. It will continue to be hard fought, be played between two extremely aggressive set of people but with grace and without “thuggish” behaviour.

We owe our game that.