Integrity of Heroes

Lots of high profile news stories out there at the moment ...

I'm thinking mostly of the sport world. We're seeing the usual childish antics of the football world but there's also a massive story out there with cycling ...

When our heroes fall, they tend to fall a very long way. It all depends on how high a pedestal we put them on. I'm thinking mostly of Lance Armstrong. 7 times Tour De France winner, a record now wiped out due to consistent, cynical cheating.

The really sad thing is that the cheating extends to all sports, although some sports have less integrity than others. Football is about the worst when it comes to integrity. The amount of cheating that goes on in professional football is unbelievable. And it's the major reason why I don't pay much attention to football. Don't get me wrong, it's a good game to play but when you take it to club level, the attitude becomes "win at any cost". In the case of football, the cost is all semblance of honour or fair play.

And yet the players are allowed to get away with it because they are on such a high pedestal that their fans believe they can do no wrong. Hence how an utter thug can become England captain.

We see it in other sports too, with the main avenue being drugs cheating.

Cricket isn't immune, although it has improved with the advent of more television involved in the decision making. At international level, it used to be that batsmen typically would not walk when getting caught off a fine edge. That means they're leaving it up to the umpire to decide that they've hit the ball and with the really fine edges, there's so much doubt that the umpire will give the batsmen the benefit.

It's not just the batsmen. "Bowling" has changed considerably over the past decade. There's a legal way to bowl and many illegal ways to bowl. Mostly, the difference between legal and illegal is determined by how much the arm flexes. Too much flex means the player is actually throwing the ball. Why's that bad ? Because it means the bowler can do very strange things with the ball, or because the ball comes down faster.

The original thrower of the modern age was Murali, who gave the impression that he threw the ball because of a deformity with his arm. It looks bent from one angle but straight from another. Couple that with the natural rotation of the arm and you get the impression that he's throwing. No - Murali's secret wasn't the elbow deformity, it was extraordinary double jointed wrists. They let him turn the ball a huge amount and both ways, which is usually incredibly difficult.

I say incredibly difficult because I could actually do what Murali did too, albeit with much more difficulty because my joints are not nearly so flexible. That is, I had the natural offspinner that I could turn into a Graeme Swann style topspinner. Plus I had a finger-legbreak, which I could only bowl very slowly because it's completely unnatural for the wrist to go that way.

But this is all beside the point ...

Cricket's been infested with throwing to a much higher degree in the past decades, because the national boards see it as a huge insult to their nation for a thrower to be exposed as a thrower. Andrew Flintoff, hero of England, threw the ball at times. Johan Botha threw almost every ball I saw him bowl in the T20 world cup.

It's all about how high a pedestal we put people on. Sometimes that pedestal is so high, we ignore the deficiencies or the bad points.

And that brings me to : Jimmy Saville ... The news over the last week shows that if someone is on a pedestal that high, it's a mighty crash when they came down. Yet there's no way someone could have done what he allegedly did without intentional support (not just the turning of a blind eye) from a lot of people.

I have to admit, while I watched programmes like Jim'll fix it, I couldn't stand the man. I had no reason for it at the time, outside of seeing what I believe I picked up on as a dismissive attitude. I suspect my instincts were picking up on what we're seeing reported now. Instincts can be a powerful thing.

PS Back to the cricket - it's sad that I only learned lots more variation after my shoulder wouldn't support bowling. I used to bowl medium pace swing bowling but would also practice spin in the nets. I could bowl wrist spin (badly) and offspin (decently but not accurately). The offspin had a demonic topspin variation but I could also bowl that one that went the wrong way. Badly. As in, to make my wrist bend that way meant bowling ridiculously slowly. So slowly that in the nets, the ball tended to go so high it would hit the top of the net. And that's high up ...