2013 Year in Review: The biggest cricket controversies of the year

From umpiring gaffes to coaching howlers, from players’ off-field attitudinal attributes to their tweeting idiosyncrasies, from decision reviewing glitches to warts in reputed tournaments and from scheduling stand-offs to questionable play-making. The 2013 cricketing season has seen all sorts of controversies and then some.

To cynical eyes, some of these controversies have been the nail on the head of the sport while for the more naively optimistic ones, these are naught but hardships that they expect the cricketers to overcome as only sportsmen can. The more shameful incidents however have come to be seen as the sport’s share of infamy, variations of well-known traditional practices that cricket has had to put up with as evolutions, in the few centuries of its existence.

Looking back – in perspective – at each of these incidences, however brings forth a bittersweet poignancy. Of chances that were lost and forfeited, of problems that still loom large in the horizon despite all efforts to keep them at bay and of changes that never took off in spite of all mechanisms to bring changes about.

The prominent controversial components include:

Stuart Broad’s Walking (not walking) incident

Stuart Broad – Too lazy to walk?

The first Ashes Test (English leg) at Trent Bridge saw the sowing of notorious deeds by England that saw them reaping rich rewards from the Aussie crowd in the return leg, Down Under. Stuart Broad’s actions of not walking off the ground despite knowing that he had edged to Aussie captain Michael Clarke in the slips, off Ashton Agar saw the Australian fans seeing red though many past Australian Ashes legends batted for Broad citing the spirit of rivalry.

The English team went on to win the match but Broad’s action dismissed him from the hearts of those who believed in the values of sportsmanship that the ‘Gentleman’s Game’ stood for.