Opinion: Harmanpreet row - That ain't cricket, but is there more than meets the eye?

By Nikhil Naz: In an interview from five years ago, soon after she had earned herself the reputation of being one of the leading players in the world, Harmanpreet Kaur was quoted as saying, “I’m a shy person off the field. On the field, I am very aggressive -- you know, ‘tod-phodh kar dalegi’ type.”

Tod-phodh she did. Quite literally. Last Saturday. During a one-day game against Bangladesh.

The cricket world watched in horror as the Indian women’s cricket team captain smashed the stumps with her bat after being given out by the on-field umpire — an unfair call in her view. The off-stump went flying a few meters; the middle and leg stump left deformed. This was followed by a threatening gesture with the bat, directed at the umpire. And finally, the walk back to the pavilion was peppered with angry mutterings and the profuse shaking of the head.

In Harman’s defence, she was indeed undone by a glaring umpiring error. The official scorecard reads — Harmanpreet Kaur caught-at-slip, whilst the batter herself was under the impression that she was given out LBW. But whichever way you look at it, it’s clear that the man in the middle, tasked with making the decision, got this one horribly wrong.

The footage suggests the ball touched the bat which nullifies LBW; and the ball bounced soon after, thereby eliminating a catch too.

Of course, the veteran of 127 ODIs was aggrieved. What’s sport without emotions, anyway. But showing total contempt towards the umpires — that’s not cricket.

And yet, worse was what followed.

The Indian captain made a few unsavoury comments at the post-match press conference, more than an hour after her dismissal, by which point she’d had ample time to reflect on her on-field actions.

“The kind of umpiring that was happening, we were very surprised. The next time we come to Bangladesh, we will make sure we have to deal with this type of umpiring and prepare ourselves accordingly.”

But she wasn’t done. After all that she had to say during the presentation, Harman went on to shout, “Call the umpires too” while clicking photographs with the Bangladeshi team, suggesting the match adjudicators too were part of the Bangladesh team. Only a mature response from her Bangladeshi counterpart, Nigar Sultana, who preferred to walk away with her team, defused a potentially volatile situation.

This begs the question: what could have led to a ‘shy-person off the field’ such as Harmanpreet Kaur to act against her natural grain? Was it just one incident, or a culmination of various occurrences throughout the tour, with the umpiring decision during the last game proving to be the proverbial last straw?

Maybe the gaffe by the presenter referring to Harman as Jemimah Rodrigues at the post-match presentation during an earlier match? The disgust in the Indian skipper’s voice while correcting the anchor was hard to miss.

Or the omission of the Indian high-commissioner to Bangladesh during the presentation ceremony for the final ODI, even as he stood on the sidelines. “Our high commissioner from India is also there - I hope you could have also invited him here, but that's also fine,” she concluded.

Or maybe there’s more to it than meets the eye?

Hurt egos, perhaps? The ignominy of, first, losing an ODI match to a team you had never previously never lost an ODI match to? Or the eventually sharing of trophy with a team made up of relatively unknowns, even as you boast of players that feature in some of the most glamorous cricket leagues across the globe?

There are also murmurs emanating from within the Indian camp that suggest the skipper’s outburst wasn’t just down to her dismissal alone. The team felt that two other batters — Yastika Bhatia and Amanjot Kaur — were also at the receiving end of some poor umpiring. Both adjudged LBW.

However, unlike the Harman decision, the match footage makes it amply clear that neither Yastika nor Amanjot were unlucky. So, that’s that.

Irrespective, nothing could justify the Indian captain’s boorish behaviour in the post-match interviews and presentation. In fact, when seen in context, the two-match ban imposed by the ICC on the 34-year-old Indian skipper now seems no more than just a rap on the knuckles.

There’s no other way of putting it, but the manner in which Harmanpreet conducted herself — displaying total disregard towards the umpires, the opposition, the hosts and most importantly the sport itself — was unbecoming of a national captain and an ambassador of her country.

Incidentally, six years ago, it was Harmanpreet Kaur who stepped up to answer a question that women’s cricket had long been grappling with — can we achieve the big-hitting capabilities of men’s cricket to make our limited overs cricket look attractive? Her 115-ball 171 in the semis of the 2017 ODI World Cup answered that question as emphatically as possible and changed the dynamics of women’s cricket forever — in the way it was played, viewed, marketed and consumed.

And today, just when we’ve begun to celebrate the new structure in world cricket — equal prize-money and match-fee for both men and women, never mind the uneven revenue generation — Harman, once again, seems to have taken upon herself to match the men in every other facet of the game, too.

Don’t. Please don’t. The Gentleman’s Game is already a defunct concept. The sport needs a new identity. The women’s game may be our only hope.