Top 5 rules v Spirit of Cricket moments

The debate about Spirit of Cricket polarizes public opinion like none other. The Spirit of Cricket is basically the standard of conduct expected from players of the so-called gentlemans game, but the fact is that it can begrossly misused depending on convenience.There is often public outrage when the Spirit of Cricket issupposedly violated by a team,despite the fact that the actions of the team might be perfectly acceptable as per the laws of the game. Here are 5 such instances:

#5 Michael Clarke\'s catch against India in Sydney

The Test series between Australia and India in 2008 is possibly one of the most controversial series ever played. Apart from the ‘Monkeygate’ involving Andrew Symonds and Harbhajan Singh, there were a number of poor umpiring decisions that compounded matters. One of them was when Michael Clarke claimed to have cleanly caught Sourav Ganguly during the infamous Sydney Test match.

There had been an agreement between Anil Kumble and Ricky Ponting, the two captains, prior to the start of the series that the fielder’s word would be accepted when it came to contentious catches.

While that was absolutely fine, what irked the Indians was the fact that Clarke asserted to have caught Ganguly at 2nd slip before the ball bounced, despite television replays suggesting otherwise. The two umpires, instead of going to the 3rd umpire, decided to take Clarke’s word at face value, much to the annoyance of Kumble, who later made the claim that “only one team was playing in the spirit of the game”.