The last few weeks have provided entertainment and embarrassment en masse for cricket fans worldwide. A five run penalty for suspected ball tampering, imposed by Darrell Hair and Billy Doctrove upon the Pakistan team, saw Pakistan respond with a sit-down protest in their dressing room after a tea break, going on to forfeit the Oval test match against England. It was a tense situation that could have been solved with a little diplomacy and flexibility, but ended up erupting into a mess that even reached the sports pages in the Los Angeles and New York Times.

Speculation and blame-passing will continue for the next few weeks until the hearing at the end of September vindicates one side or the other, but the scandal of ball tampering has now resurfaced on the cricketing scene. Cricketers and ex-cricketers alike are again offering comments on lollies and mints in players’ pockets, seam picking and the like, while some pundits - most notably Pakistan’s coach Bob Woolmer - have gone as far as to suggest that it should be legalised within a certain extent.

All this, of course, is unnecessary - and has been for a while. It’s only the nature of cricket that has forced ball tampering to become a greater scandal in the game. Former Australian leg spinner Bill O’Reilly once wrote that cricket was a batsman’s game. Batsmen, he said, were the aristocrats of the sport; bowlers, the working class. If anything, his statement’s become increasingly correct over the years as the game continues to turn into a sport for batsmen.

At its core, cricket was once a contest between bat and ball. And it was then an even game, with bowlers receiving new balls every 55 overs, pitches remaining uncovered and often being affected adversely by moisture and rain, allowing bowlers plenty of assistance in their battle against the men 22 yards away. With commercialisation though, the balance has tipped alarmingly to one side. Bats are larger, allowing miscued strokes to carry for six all too frequently; balls - particularly the Kookaburra - provide little help for the bowlers after the first few overs, and pitches have become neutered. 

Tracks like Headingley and Perth were once known for the extreme assistance bowlers received from them, yet they’ve become unremarkably flat in the last decade or so. Totals of 400 or more are increasingly common, and in the case of games that end quickly with flurries of wickets while batsmen struggle on underprepared or damp surfaces, wickets are berated as being unfit for test standard. The Mumbai test of 2004, where Australia and India put on a little over two thrilling days of cricket in a fast paced match on a cracked surface that was later reported to the ICC, is one such example. 

Cricket’s problem isn’t with ball tampering, or the players that do it. It’s become a necessary evil in the game today; the only manner in which bowlers can sometimes get a say in a match where batsmen are clouting the ball to all parts on a flat deck. The issue goes beyond the situation now revolving around Darrell Hair and Inzamam ul Haq, and beyond the many bowlers who in the past have been reported for the ‘crime’. Rather than punishments and penalties, the ICC might do far more to resolve the situation by targeting the very root: the issues that lead so many bowlers on to start picking a seam or scratching a ball on one side in hopes of finding reverse swing. 

Digging up some wickets and allowing for more bowler-friendly wickets, without the stigma of ’sub par wickets’ being applied to pitches where matches finish in two to three days might be a good way to start. Even the game a little more; allow for more green seaming tracks or dusty, cracked surfaces, and far fewer bowlers might be inclined to tamper with help already being provided in their battles against batsmen. Changes could also be made to the ball, either by redesigning the Kookaburra to ensure that the seam doesn’t flatten after a handful of overs while reducing the ball’s ability to swing and grip the surface, or by adapting more bowler friendly balls, like the SG ball used in Indian tests, which has been known to provide more help to both seamers and spinners than its more frequently-used Australian counterpart.

The saga stemming from the forfeit at the Oval has exposed a number of cracks in the ICC and the cricketing world, but it seems that the less important ones are presently being looked at. This situation may be resolved but ball tampering complaints, particularly on flatter surfaces designed for big totals and drawn matches, will almost surely continue to crop up from time to time. Taking a look at the bigger picture and the balance of the game might be a far better way to set things right.