Eoin Morgan vs R Aswhin: Immoral or not, cricket needs to come out of its big boys club image

Many cricketers and commentators have already spoken about what happened between Eoin Morgan and Ravichandran Ashwin during the KKR versus DC IPL match of September 28.

While Ashwin has made it clear that he would have gone for the run even if he had seen the ball hitting Rishabh Pant at the other hand, Virender Sehwag has called Dinesh Karthik the real culprit in the entire fiasco. The third angle is, of course, Morgan allegedly calling Ashwin ‘a disgrace’.

There are three things to consider here:

First, has Ashwin taken away the grace of the game cricket has always been known for?

Was it wrong on Karthik’s part to talk about the incident off the field?

Is it Morgan’s false pretense of moral high ground that made him use the word ‘disgrace’?

Ashin is a very competitive cricketer and it seems win is the only thing that matters to him. Nothing wrong in that but his hunger for a win also makes him do things that were not so welcome in the ‘90s. The times have changed and so has the nature of cricket, but one needs to understand that Javed Miandad, despite being one of the finest in international cricket, can never be a Sunil Gavaskar or Rahul Dravid or even Zaheer Abbas. The temperament makes the difference.

The difference between a legend and a top cricketer is in the attitude. Ashwin was not the ambassador of the game at that point of time. Consider Pele or the late Maradona, a game is also about the people and not just winning. So, even if it was within the rules, he should have avoided that run. It wasn’t the World Cup finale anyway!

Sehwag is totally wrong in taking a moral high ground here that the conversations on the field should remain private. The spectators need to know the inside story about the demigods they worship. Truth be told, many of the cricketers give a very toxic vibe but people don’t know about them. Concealing such conversations within the big boys club is not letting the fans know about the truth of their idols. Enough of this behaviour like morally superior person in public, but the its total opposite in reality.

Third, Morgan shouldn’t have used the word ‘disgrace’ as he is not Dravid either. There have been instances when his team mates, under his captaincy, have behaved like bullies and he didn’t say a word. Whatever the English players believe, it definitely has a certain ‘supremacy’ tone to it. They might be using the word ‘disgrace’ just like that under the Queen’s rule, but in rest of the world, it means fallen. Really heavy duty. The world outside Morgan’s bubble also understands English and it didn’t sound like the appropriate word to say to a non-English player.