The ‘spirit of cricket’ is hard to pin down, but Clicky Ponting’s trial by social media ain’t it

OpinionSports ColumnistJuly 31, 2026 — 3:30pmThis week, the curious case of Brian Devine, of Saltburn Cricket Club’s second XI in the North Yorkshire and South Durham League, Division Two, found its way into the sports pages of national newspapers across Australia.The team from Saltburn had defeated opponents Norton by 159 runs. Norton’s No.4 arrived at the crease at a tense juncture. First ball pitched outside off and beat his bat entirely. However, as the ball passed through to the cordon, the fielder at first slip is alleged to have clicked his fingers, mimicking the sound of an edge.The wicketkeeper gloved the ball cleanly, Saltburn appealed in violent harmony, and the umpire’s finger pointed skywards. The batter’s displeasure was patent. His remonstrating amounted to not much. Until it did.Ordinarily the umpire’s decision would have been the end of things. Except that the match was livestreamed (and archived) on the England and Wales Cricket Board’s Play Cricket platform. Because in 2026, everything is streamed and recorded because apparently there’s an audience for this content.From that, 12 seconds or thereabouts of the footage made its way onto social media. From there, awareness of the video spread like Ebola. Cue mayhem.Inside 100 hours, Devine had been shamed globally, branded “Clicky Ponting”; apparently jettisoned by his club for the foreseeable future; investigated by his league; speared by a sponsor; outed in print by his day job at a livestock auction house; and pronounced by Piers Morgan as a cheat running a years-long clicking scam. The Grade Cricketer offered to underwrite Devine’s legal fees. Photo: Simon LetchBut did Devine’s alleged actions amount to cheating? If a fielder manufactures the sound of an edge to magic up a wicket, what rule has been broken?Almost nothing of the extra-curial nonsense of the past week has much to do with punishing cheating.Let’s start with the rules, because somebody probably should. Nowhere across the Marylebone Cricket Club’s Laws of Cricket is this apparent conduct identified. The nearest fit is Law 41.5.1, which states it is unfair for any fielder wilfully to attempt, by word or action, to distract, deceive or obstruct either batter after the striker has received the ball. Note especially the object of the deception: The batter, not the umpire.Marnus Labuschagne was the first man penalised under that provision, in 2017, for dropping a shoulder at cover and feigning a throw he never had the option of making. Quinton de Kock, keeping in a one-day international, theatrically feigned a throw to his own end after the ball had gone to the other; Pakistan’s Fakhar Zaman, on 193 and the highest score ever made in a one-day run chase, turned to look, hesitated, and was run out. There was no penalty and no royal commission; it was clever cricket.Brian Devine has been named as the man at the centre of the alleged cricket scandal.Deception isn’t an aberration in cricket. It’s the game’s language. The doosra is a lie; so is the slower ball, the disguised wrong ’un, the fielder who ambles to suggest the ball is further away than it is. So is every performative appeal from a cordon that knows there never was any reason to make a noise.Best of all, though, is the batter who nicks it and knows as much, but nonetheless stands their ground. He induces the identical false belief, in the identical mind, by omission rather than commission.There’s a difference between lying and forging. An appeal is advocacy; a fabricated noise is evidence manufactured and tendered without the decision-maker knowing it’s there. In my trade, that’s the line between putting a case forcefully and misleading the court; only the latter can end a career. But by what evidence can it be proved that any clicking happened for any nefarious purpose? The problem is that it is baked into the Laws of Cricket that the sport should not only be played according to the rules, but also under the “Spirit of the Game”. That “spirit” is difficult to accurately identify.An appeal is advocacy; a fabricated noise is evidence manufactured and tendered without the decision-maker knowing it’s there.Is it consistent with the spirit of the game to ignore the actual rules of the sport, if the following of the rules alone would produce a result which seems to some as unfair? If the rules are the rules, and the facts are the facts, how can applying the rules to the facts fly in the face of this “spirit”?The Preamble to the Laws of Cricket speaks directly of this “spirit” of cricket. It is legislated that it is central to the spirit of the game to play hard and fair play; accept the umpires’ decisions; respect your opponents and the authority of the umpires; show self-discipline, even when things are going against you; and congratulate the opposition on their successes.The Preamble also states that the major responsibility for ensuring fair play rests with the captains. Law 31.8 lets a fielding captain withdraw an appeal, with the umpire’s consent, and have the batter recalled. The game’s drafters put the duty and the remedy in the same pair of hands – and they weren’t the hands at first slip.What, precisely, has been proved here? One camera angle, an audible noise and a coincident delivery. Whether a finger-snap carries 30 metres in a manner that registers as bat on ball rather than as a Fonz-esque click is a question of acoustics somebody ought not to assume.Then there’s the pattern evidence, which should trouble anyone with a forensic mind. Saltburn’s keeper is said to have taken 39 catches in 13 matches with Devine in the side, and five in seven without; eight in one innings against one opponent, against a men’s all-time Test match record of seven.Written in a sentence that might seem damning. But in a hearing? What about the sample size? Who was bowling? On what surfaces? Is there some innocent explanation nobody has bothered to ask? It might survive every question. It hasn’t faced one yet.The league in which Mr Devine plays has behaved impeccably. It has received a complaint; it has implemented a process and it won’t say anything until that process ends.Mr Devine’s club, in the days after the clip trended, suspended him for the remainder of the season and beyond. That’s a protective, interim measure doing the work of a sentence. That step doesn’t presume guilt and nobody should conclude to the contrary.Recreational cricket has acquired the evidentiary apparatus of a royal commission and the procedural protections of a group chat.If Brian Devine did it, knowingly and with malevolent intent, then sure, sanction him fairly. Under an actual rule and after a hearing he’s entitled to attend.Darren Kane is a sports columnist for The Sydney Morning Herald.Connect via X or email.From our partners