That's just not cricket...

Cricket is, by and large, considered to be a ‘sporting’ sort of a game. If the umpires give you out, you walk (most of the time). If an opposing team member gets a well-deserved double ton, you applaud them, even if it means the chances of winning have gone down the gurgler. It’s surely one of the few games that stop for a rather genteel sounding tea-break. You certainly wouldn’t see it in the football Premiership, would you? Drogba running in to take a penalty kick and the ref blowing his whistle, shouting “That’s it gentlemen, off for scones and jam.”

I say this, mostly because of a conversation I once had with my dear mum. I was harking back to a game in 2007 where, after goodness knows how many straight defeats in a row, Surrey grimly bucked the trend thanks largely to the magnificent batting of Matt Nicholson and the bravery of one Mark Butcher, who spent most of the game batting on one leg, as his knee had fallen off.

The then Surrey skipper had a runner, in accordance with the laws of cricket, to do all the footwork between the stumps whilst he batted the game towards a well-deserved draw. On telling my mother of this heroic last stand, she looked at me in total shock.

“That’s cheating!” She declared.

I sort of blinked at her in astonishment. Cheating? How could it be cheating? It was within the rules! And then I got what she was driving at. Although technically having a runner was perfectly acceptable, was it morally – in a sporting sense – correct to have a fresh pair of legs do your running for you whilst you stood there and swung the bat about?

Obviously as a big fan of Butch, and having much admired the match-saving partnership between he and Nicho (affectionately known as the Kennington Pigeon Murderer by the Rampants), I wasn’t actually prepared to agree with what she had said. As far as she was concerned, if the skipper wasn’t in a condition to play his normal game he wasn’t fit to be on the field and should have retired hurt.

“What was the alternative?” I asked. “How do you make the game fair in these circumstances? Have the fielders hop on one leg? Tie the bowler’s legs together on his run-up?”

Oddly enough, she found that suggestion perfectly acceptable.

And they say cricket doesn’t appeal to eccentrics?