luckyeddie said:
Would ANYONE from the 'he might have done it on purpose' camp like to explain a possible motive (no matter how contrived)?
Personally, I don't blame the ICC for not finding anything inappropriate (and it's quite possible there
was nothing inappropriate) - what annoyed me most about this case was that given that the referee/umpires were willing to entertain the notion that Langer's action could have been deliberate, the charge should never have been a level one violation - it should have been higher. But some of the arguments here as to why it
couldn't have been in any way deliberate are just silly. By these standards, nobody would ever do anything counter-productive or illogical, and we all know that they do.
In any case, off the top of my head, here's a way that it could have played out:
Langer knocks the bail off, and notices, and thinks nothing of it. Later, Ponting sees the bail on the ground, and honestly appeals. Langer sees what happened, thinks "oh wait, I knocked those over" but says nothing to correct the appeal. This is not cheating (well, maybe it is), but it's surely bringing the game into disrepute. It's all happened in minutes, and Langer, not being the swiftest (sorry, Top_Cat) doesn't have time to think through the possibilities, and has a "brain explosion", like some people have speculated. Likely also as a factor is a lingering resentment over Tillakaratne's attempt to swat the ball away from Ponting previously in the series, which the Australians may feel was cheating.
If you think about this, it's not unlike some of the more egregious "non catches" that players have claimed over the years. These days, your chances of actually dismissing a batsman this way are zilch, because unless the video umpire can observe clearly that the catch
was taken, without fail, the verdict will be not-out. Why do these players do it then? Who knows? Some of them might not actually know if they took the catch, but I'm damn certain some of them do.
And then there's the less likely (but still possible, I guess) motive of protest - a targeted dig that Ponting was also aware of, directed towards Tillakaratne as retaliation for the incident described above.
Having said this, yes, it is also quite plausible that Langer
didn't feel anything, and that this was all just a comedy of sequential events that conspired to make things look less innocent than they actually were. I just find the argument that "but they must have known they wouldn't get away with it!" unconvincing, because a) it depends on what their goals actually were, and b) the definition of ill-considered is just that, ill-considered.
But I think Australia is mostly bad people with but a few good ones.
:duh: :P
