Friday 12 June 2009

Stuart Broad...Cheating or The Start of a New Era?

Many students find that during their studies the majority of their modules they do end up being pointless, myself included, but one incident occurred during the Twenty20 cricket World Cup that made me sit up and realise I had learnt about this in the classroom. I’m talking about none other than England’s Stuart Broad, who was involved in, well lets say some very un sportsmanship behaviour against South Africa on Thursday night.

His ‘antics’ have earned him a warning from the ICC and could possible bring into dispute future actions from fellow cricketers. It seemed as if the 22 year old was purposely trying to put off and distract the opposition, with pointing halfway through his run up. England’s bland captain Paul Collingwood believes that: "New techniques and theories are going to be produced and things like this are going to happen and people are going to find different ways of putting a batsman off."

But the big debate that’s come out of the incident is whether or not it is classed as cheating. We have seen the same bizarre mannerisms used in other sports, without complaints or warnings issued. Can’t sports stars win on just ability alone or do they need such dirty and off putting tactics in order to gain an advantage? Although in Broad’s case no advantage at all.


Other Sports Personalities accused of such bizarre tactics:

Edwin Van Der Sar - The Dutch giant used similar methods during the 2008 Champions League penalty shoot out against Chelsea…it obviously worked for him.

Rafael Nadal - Although the world number one doesn’t point, he does intentionally control the tempo and speed of the game by wiping his face after every point.

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