What is the Spirit of Cricket?

The spirit of cricket is the concept that players should follow “fair play” principles that go beyond the letter of the law. Some of these principles are clearly written but others are more subjective and often controversial.

The official rulebook of cricket (its “Laws”) include a preamble about the Sprit of Cricket that includes several principles. These including respecting other players and officials, congratulating and thanking the opposition, and accepting the umpire’s decision (other than through the DRS review process). Breaking any of these principles does not affect the game itself, though could mean disciplinary punishment from cricket regulators.

More widely, the “spirit of cricket” is a term applied to the idea of not taking an unfair advantage, even if doing so is within the rules. Often this involves not appealing for a dismissal even where it is legitimate. Some situations when a player or captain taking (or not taking) an action has prompted a debate about following the spirit of cricket include:

• Running out a player who has unintentionally collided with a fielder or bowler.
• Running out a player who mistakenly believes the ball is dead and they can leave their crease safely.
• Bowling a wide or no ball when scores are level (thus ending the game), preventing a player on 99 from reaching a century.
• Running out the non-striking batter during the bowler’s runup (a “Mankad”) without warning.

Often in such cases, an umpire will ask if the captain wants to withdraw an appeal. This is a way of hinting that although the team is acting within the rules, it might be seen as breaching the spirit of cricket. Of course, the team is under no obligation to accept this verdict.

The use of the term often involves controversial situations and people complaining about a breach of the spirit of cricket are often accused of being subjective, inconsistent and biased by their support for a team.

Perhaps the ultimate example of a breach of the spirit of cricket was a game between Australia and New Zealand in 1981. New Zealand needed to score six runs from the final ball to tie the game, but bowler Trevor Chappell used an underarm delivery, rolling the ball along the pitch. This made it effectively impossible to score the required six.

At the time such a delivery was only against the rules of some competitions and was not banned in the overall laws of cricket. The incident was hugely controversial with most critics saying it breached the spirit of cricket’s requirement of fair play and giving the opponents a reasonable chance to compete. It prompted a change in the rules to ban underarm deliveries.