Opinion: Spare your moral indignation over Du Plessis’ ball rubbing

In case you’ve been under a rock or something over the last 48 hours or so, South Africa’s stand-in Test captain is in a bit of trouble. He has been officially charged by the ICC over an alleged ball tampering offence.

He of the impeccably groomed hair and ruthless captaincy got caught rubbing his ball the wrong way this week. Some have said that it’s just a case of sour grapes after the Aussies were so thoroughly humiliated, but the news actually came from the media. Now, cynics will say that is all just a smokes screen. Whatever you believe of how the news got out or why, an army of high horses are being ridden to various ivory towers around the world.

The team have defended their captain with Hashim Amla calling the allegations a “joke”. At a press conference on Friday, the whole team faced the press and defended their captain, insisting that he did nothing wrong.

“Surely logic has to prevail?” Amla said.

This picture pretty much sums up how the team feels.

South Africans standing shoulder to shoulder in defense of Faf du Plessis. Clearly upset by allegations. #ausvsa pic.twitter.com/J4TBdTKsiQ

— Melinda Farrell (@melindafarrell) November 18, 2016

The issue is with Du Plessis sticking his finger in his mouth to get some lubrication from a mint in his gob to shine the ball ferociously, allegedly. How anyone will actually prove this nobody knows. The ICC’s laws are pretty murky when it comes to sucking on mints and shining balls. There’s no law that governs the chewing of things while on a field and Du Plessis, who has pleaded not guilty to the charge, will probably just claim he was using his own spittle instead of the mint juice.

Here’s the thing about “tampering” or, as teams call it, “ball management”…. Everyone does it. The problem is that everyone else is just much better at hiding it. Du Plessis, of course, has previous. He was warned about roughing up the ball in the first Test and was fined in 2013 for rubbing a ball against the zipper on his pants.

Now, before you waffle on about how it’s law and it’s cheating and yada yada yada keep in mind that the ICC is aware of what goes on with the dark arts of ball management and getting it to swing.

Consider this. The law is just a level two offence. Want to know what else is a level two offence? Appealing a bit too much.

In an interview with The Guardian in 2006, the late Bob Woolmer said of the law that governs “tampering”:

“I’d scrub out the law completely.

“It was brought in because of ball-tampering with razor blades and bottle tops and everything else in the past,” added Woolmer, “but that’s been shoved out of the game now. It’s like prohibition: the more you ban alcohol, the more it goes underground. They really need to open it up in my opinion.”

Altering the state of the ball slightly to get it to swing is not the most serious problem facing cricket today. The ICC has no ban on mints. It does have a ban on using “artificial substances”.  Does that mean chewing gum, biltong, nuts and the ten minutes immediately after a banana is considering “artificial” too? Just because the English said they used mints during the 2005 Ashes – and said it had little effect on the Kookaburra ball – does not suddenly mean that mints will make balls hoop through the air as if though it had been pulled through razor wire.

The cacophony of moral indignation is unnecessary.

Sure, Du Plessis might have bended the law a bit, but perhaps it’s the law that needs looking at instead.