The Ten Controversies Over Sporting Equipment

The Sunday Age

Sunday August 27, 2006

MICHAEL COULTER

1. Hair-gate

In cricket, like cooking, some combinations never work. Just as you wouldn?t serve pickled herring with pancakes, so it?s unwise to partner umpire Darrell Hair with subcontinental teams. Judging by his offer, and subsequent retraction, to step away from the game for $US500,000, his decision to penalise Pakistan fi ve runs for ball tampering is something he now regrets. No one can dispute he was entitled to apply the sanction, but you?ve got to question his peace of mind after yesterday?s revelations that he?d go quietly for a lump sum of cash. The ICC had been standing fi rm behind Hair, but even though it now has a get-out clause, none of this Hair-related fi asco will do the simmering mistrust between cricket?s old and new worlds much good at all.

2. Metal storm

A quirk of cricket is that one form of ball tampering - polishing - is quite legal. Added to that is that much harm can come to a ball during a perfectly legitimate day?s play.

One dastardly act it is protected from, though, is punishment by metal bats. That was ensured in 1979, when Dennis Lillee was told to take his aluminium bat and go home. Lillee, who had reportedly sunk $50,000 into making metal ?Combat? bats, was using one in an Ashes Test in Perth when English skipper and master antagonist Mike Brearley complained it was carving chunks out of the sacred cherry. A furious Lillee was forced to swap blades and the rules were quickly changed to stipulate bats must be made of wood. Years after, Lillee told an Adelaide newspaper that Brearley approached him after the match. ?He signed (the bat) and wished me all the best with the sales,? Lillee said.

3. Spitting chips

Cricket is not the only game where calculated abuse of the ball delivers an advantage.

In baseball, a touch of moisture will cause a pitch to drop sharply and late, making it virtually unhittable. The spit ball, as it?s known, has been illegal since 1920, but that didn?t stop Gaylord Perry carving out a hall-of-fame career with it in the 1960s and `70s. A washed up relief pitcher heading for the scrapheap at 26, Perry revived his fortunes by mastering the dodgy delivery. In his autobiography, Me and the Spitter, Perry revealed some of the tricks he used to apply foreign substances to the ball. These included putting a dab of Vaseline on his zipper, or sniffi ng pepper to make his nose run. Legend has it he approached the makers of Vaseline about endorsing their product, but was rebuffed with a postcard saying: ?We soothe babies? backsides, not baseballs.?

4. Horror story

Boxing is full of tales about loaded gloves. Most are no more than that, but one of the sport?s grimmer nights involves the 1983 welterweight fi ght when 21-year-old prospect Billy Collins had his career ended by journeyman Luis Resto. Before the bout, Resto?s trainer had removed some of the padding from his gloves, greatly increasing the potency of his punches. Collins lasted the distance, but his eyesight was so badly affected he couldn?t fi ght again. He fell into depression and some say his death nine months later in a car crash was suicide. Resto and his trainer went to jail for assault, conspiracy, and possession of a deadly weapon, but the fi ghter has always maintained his innocence. In a 2000 interview with Boxing Monthly magazine, he said: ?The gloves felt the same as always. If the padding was out, when you hit somebody, you?d feel pain.

You?d break your hands. And if I knew the gloves had been tampered with, why would I have gone to Collins? corner after the fi ght to congratulate him??

5. Ali-Liston

Less depressing than the Resto affair, two of Muhammad Ali?s best-known fi ghts involved gloves and their possible misuse. In his famous bout with Henry Cooper, Ali?s trainer Angelo Dundee brought a conveniently torn glove to the referee?s attention to give his man time to recover from a stunning left hook. Dundee was again to the fore in Ali?s fi rst title fi ght, when ointment on Sonny Liston?s gloves dripped into Ali?s eyes and blinded him. Ali wanted to quit, but Dundee sent him back out with the words: ?This is for the world championship, there?s no turning back now.? Ali back-pedalled for the fi fth round until his eyes cleared, then went on to win the fi rst of his three championships.

6. Shock tactics

Depending on where you stand on animal rights, you could argue that the primary bit of sporting equipment in racing is the horse. If you accept that, the prime instance of tampering in recent times would be the infamous substitution of Fine Cotton for Bold Personality.

On a different level, in 2001 Victorian trainer Mark Riley was disqualifi ed for two years when stewards discovered a set of electrifi ed spurs in his stables.

Riley denied ownership, saying he was sickened at the thought of using them.

Chief steward Des Gleeson told an appeals tribunal the spurs had a ?kick like a mule?, but emphasised they had not been tested on horses. ?The animal welfare people would be down on us like a ton of bricks,? Gleeson said.

7. A fi shy sword

Regarded by some as the greatest cheat in sporting history is one Boris Onischenko, a Ukrainian army offi cer representing the USSR in the modern pentathlon at the 1976 Montreal Olympics.

Onischenko, unsurprisingly dubbed ?Dis-onischenko?, was disqualifi ed during the fencing discipline for using a modifi ed sword that let him activate the electronic scoring system simply by pressing a button. He was caught when his British opponent, Jeremy Fox, complained that Onischenko was gaining points even when he had clearly missed.

Ominously, given the murderous and vengeful nature of the Soviet Union, Onischenko was hustled out of the athletes village by team offi cials and never heard from again.

8. Caddy sack

One of the advantages of individual sports such as golf is that your destiny is usually in your own hands. Except, as Ian Woosnam found out in the 2001 British Open, when your caddy dynamites your chances by leaving an illegal 15th club in the bag. Woosnam had just made birdie on the fi rst hole of the fi nal round to grab a share of the lead when his caddy, Miles Byrne, told him of the error, which meant a two-shot penalty. History does not record Woosnam?s response, but he said later the incident destroyed his round.?

I did not really get it out of my head all the way around,? Woosnam said. ?I kept thinking if I hadn?t had a two-shot penalty, I could have been leading or been joint leader. I never shook it off.?

Surprisingly, Byrne didn?t get the sack.

That came two weeks later when he overslept and missed Woosnam?s tee-off at the Scandinavian Open.

9. Shouldering on

As watchers of American football know, the fl ipside of defensive armour is that players can hit each other much, much harder. The two factors just about cancel out, so collisions are roughly as punishing as in other contact sports. In 1985, however, rugby league juggernauts Canterbury Bankstown were accused of arming themselves with fi breglass shoulder pads - an obviously unfair advantage when everyone else is wearing leather. The Bulldogs rejected the claim, saying it was a ploy to stain the menacing reputation of their ultra-aggressive forward pack.

The issue surfaced in rugby union in the 1990s, when the rules permitted only padding that was built into the jumper. NSW coach Greg Smith accused South Africa of wearing illegal padding before a tour match, producing the memorable line: ?I am not blind. The South African players are either wearing shoulder pads, or they are grossly deformed.?

10. Pasta tense

For all the periodic bouts of hand-wringing about how materials technology is changing tennis, none of today?s space-age composites have come close to providing the advantage of the swiftly outlawed ?spaghetti racquet?. The genius of it was in the stringing, which imparted an estimated 30 to 60 per cent more spin to the ball. In 1977 it delivered a series of shock wins to virtual unknowns, prompting a hurried ban. In its last appearance, excitable Romanian Ilie Nastase used it to end Guillermo Vilas? then-record streak of claycourt victories. Vilas was so disgusted with the unpredictable bounce Nastase was generating that he walked off the court. When interviewed this year as Rafael Nadal closed in on his claycourt record, Vilas said: ?I didn?t lose to any player. I lost to a racquet.?

YOUR SAY

About last week?s things that should never have gone to air

In the late 1970s, on a Saturday afternoon, I was driving and listening to the footy. Richmond was playing and Jack Dyer commentating. He did not use names much. Richmond got possession at half back and the commentary went approximately as follows: ?The big bloke gets the ball and kicks it to the little bloke in the centre. He takes off bouncing the ball and runs to half forward. He dodges once, dodges twice, bounces again, runs to the top of the goal square and, OOOOHHHH!!!, its a c--- of a kick!? He continued commentating without missing a beat.

Rodger Davies

I recall watching a televised match at Princess Park where I was amused to hear Bernie Quinlan sum up a free kick as ?a bit of a soft free cock? closely followed by the snickering of the surrounding commentary team.

Wonder what Bernie had on his mind at the time.

Mark Adams

WHAT DO YOU THINK?

Have any suggestions about equipment scandals that should have been on the list? Write in and tell us. We?ll publish a selection next Sunday.

Please keep your responses to no more than 50 words and send them to the address at the top of the page.

© 2006 The Sunday Age

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