Saltburn’s alleged trickery caused outrage, but cricket’s moral code conceals a rich history of cheating and convenient national myth
One incident has dominated this week’s sporting headlines, garnering even more column inches than Gianni Infantino’s apparent desire to sell the football World Cup to the highest bidder. It occurred in a second XI cricket match last weekend between Saltburn and Norton in the North Yorkshire and South Durham League. A fielder at first slip was alleged to have clicked his fingers as the ball passed the batter’s bat, in an attempt to con the umpire into thinking that there had been an edge. The ball sank into the wicketkeeper’s gloves; bowler, keeper and fielder erupted in a full-throated appeal; and the umpire sent the disbelieving batter on his way for a duck.
There the matter might have ended, but these days even second XI matches are recorded and there was footage of the alleged finger-clicking. Over the past few days, this footage has been analysed in minute detail. One writer on The Athletic bathetically likened the interrogation of the video to the decoding of the Zapruder film of President John F Kennedy’s assassination. What precisely does it show? Could the sound have emanated from behind a grassy knoll at the Saltburn ground?
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Saltburn’s alleged trickery caused outrage, but cricket’s moral code conceals a rich history of cheating and convenient national mythOne incident has dominated this week’s sporting headlines, garnering even more colum...
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