OK, after watching Gilchrist's appeals behind the stumps over the years, this has been bugging me for a while. But I decided to give Gilchrist the benefit of the doubt and believed that Gilchrist was an all round good sportsman and bloke because everyone said so. Until yesterday.
Everyone loves to talk it up about how Gilchrist is such a great sportsman because he is a "walker". He's just living off that one incident in 2003. I reckon nearly everyone has walked once in their career. Even Yuvraj did yesterday.
Let's face it, Lara started walking much earlier than Gilchrist ever did, but you don't see everyone bring that up every time this debate comes up do you?
And yesterday, two blatant cases where Gilchrist demonstrated that he is no different to the non-walkers.
First the Dravid appeal. Besides Dravid, Gilchrist would have had the second best view in the ground about whether that hit the bat or not. I need not say no more as I'm sure most of you have seen the incident.
Next, the appeal for Dhoni, that was referred to the thrid umpire. Replays showed that it clearly bounced before Gilchrist. There was even a puff of dust from the bounce. And here's what Cricinfo had to say about the incident:
Some of you guys are going to say that walking is not the same as appealing. You're right, but isn't the central principle of walking, sportsmanship?
They say that walkers who walk when it suits them are worse than non-walkers. I agree and I think the same thing can be applied to sportsmanship.
They say that you see the true side of sportsman when the pressure is on. Yesterday Australia was pushing desperately for a victory. I think we saw the true side of Gilchrist yesterday.
Everyone loves to talk it up about how Gilchrist is such a great sportsman because he is a "walker". He's just living off that one incident in 2003. I reckon nearly everyone has walked once in their career. Even Yuvraj did yesterday.
Let's face it, Lara started walking much earlier than Gilchrist ever did, but you don't see everyone bring that up every time this debate comes up do you?
And yesterday, two blatant cases where Gilchrist demonstrated that he is no different to the non-walkers.
First the Dravid appeal. Besides Dravid, Gilchrist would have had the second best view in the ground about whether that hit the bat or not. I need not say no more as I'm sure most of you have seen the incident.
Next, the appeal for Dhoni, that was referred to the thrid umpire. Replays showed that it clearly bounced before Gilchrist. There was even a puff of dust from the bounce. And here's what Cricinfo had to say about the incident:
55.2 Hogg to Dhoni, no run, loud appeal for a catch off the boot, Bucknor walks across to Benson and asks for the third umpire, Dhoni came on to the front foot and tried to drive, he got an inside edge into the ground near the heel of the front boot, it then bounced towards Gilchrist who appealed for the catch
Some of you guys are going to say that walking is not the same as appealing. You're right, but isn't the central principle of walking, sportsmanship?
They say that walkers who walk when it suits them are worse than non-walkers. I agree and I think the same thing can be applied to sportsmanship.
They say that you see the true side of sportsman when the pressure is on. Yesterday Australia was pushing desperately for a victory. I think we saw the true side of Gilchrist yesterday.