Lesson of Gabriel-Root episode

THE EDITOR: Depending on media source, West Indies fast bowler Shannon Gabriel either uttered an “anti-gay slur” or made a “homophobic remark” in the third Test against England which opposing captain Joe Root ably defused. Gabriel, from what we gather, said what he said more as distraction than studied barb against his opponent.

According to Gabriel, he was going through a difficult patch in his bowling when he found Root looking at him intensely as he prepared to bowl. “Why are you smiling at me? Do you like boys?” An umpire heard the exchange, discussed with square leg and had a chat with Gabriel.

And there the matter should have rested. A schoolboy utterance in the adult world of Test cricket partially picked up by media via Root’s response heard on stump mic. (If anything, Gabriel should have been handed demerit points for poor fatigue and picong skills.)

There are missing pieces in this puzzle: Root was heard saying “Don’t use it as an insult. There’s nothing wrong with being gay.” Any conversation analyst would conclude that Root’s comment, heard on stump mic, was not a response to Gabriel’s rhetorical question.

Something is missing here: bits of conversation, facial expression, framing words (such as “hear nah,” steups, aha!) and accent would have been critical in fairly assessing the exchange.

In a prepared statement issued a couple days later, Gabriel claimed he responded to Root thus: “I have no issues with that, but you should stop smiling at me.”

Walk back a bit: Gabriel makes a silly schoolboy remark that barely qualifies as offensive; Root deals with it by taking the moral high ground but Gabriel closes the dialogue when he says, “I have no issues with that, but you should stop smiling at me.” That should have been the end of it – grown men settling a somewhat namby-pamby exchange in a gentlemanly sort of way. But along comes the media, LGBT activists and the ICC hits the panic button.

The ICC has given licence to probing the moral conscience of players by allowing stump mics to be used for eavesdropping on on-the-field exchanges via Article 2.3 of its Code of Conduct which applies to audible obscenities during international games.

Not everyone supports this very intrusive use of technology. England coach Trevor Bayliss is adamantly against it, pointing out “sometimes in the heat of battle things are said when guys given a bit of time to sit down and think about it would give themselves a bit of a kick up the backside.”

Red Force coach Mervyn Dillon warns about how we interpret on-the-field speech uttered in the midst of a tense battle.

Root himself showed far more wisdom than the ICC overlords as he recognised and even enjoyed a hard fought but honourable contest. He is quoted as saying: “Sometimes people say things on the field that they might regret but they [that?] should stay on the field.”

The problem caused by an overenthusiastic desire to regulate behaviour goes deeper. I think Root instinctively realised that allowing the ICC and its rule book to intrude would take away from players the power to settle their differences and in the process reduce and undermine the standing of the Test cricketer. He understood quite well that in going that way he would have seen a weakening of his role as leader. Down the track it is possible the cricket captaincy will be as useless as a football captaincy.

Test cricket cannot be regulated in the same way as franchise cricket. That is the lesson of the Gabriel-Root episode.

DR PETER HANOOMANSINGH

Valsayn Park

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"Lesson of Gabriel-Root episode"

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