Sreesanth has to rein in his histrionics

Kerala and India pacer S Sreesanth has given aggression by an Indian cricketer a whole new meaning. He certainly is the most in-your-face fast bowler that this country has produced so far. However, this is not a positive in his case because he tends to focus more on his antics rather than his job – that is restricting the flow of runs and picking up wickets.

His rather juvenile antics in the second one-dayer against Australia in Kochi is just another addition to his list of bringing the game into disrepute over the last couple of months. In Tuesday’s match on his home ground, Sreesanth displayed poor sportsmanship on at least three occasions – when he gave Brad Haddin an earful after a LBW appeal had been turned down, then the very next instant throwing down the stumps at the non-striker’s end and appealing for a run-out against Andrew Symonds when the ball was dead and not in play, and finally by gesticulating and jeering wildly after he had caught Symonds of his own bowling.

In fact, such was the intensity and duration of Sreesanth’s appeal for the ‘run-out’ against Symonds that umpire Suresh Shastri was in a spot of bother until India’s captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni ordered Sreesanth to get on with the game. In the post-match conference, Dhoni admitted he initially thought the bowler was joking when he appealed for the run-out before realising that it was a serious appeal.

If this was not enough, Sreesanth went ahead and ‘celebrated’ wildly and gave Symonds an earful after dismissing the batsman. This was not only a show of utter disrespect to the opponent batsman, but it also made a mockery of the code of conduct in place for players.

Sreesanth had given a similar sort of ‘farewell’ to Matthew Hayden in two previous matches between India and Australia – in the first ODI in Bangalore and in the Twenty20 World Cup semifinals. The Kerala bowler was in fact, charged for excessive appealing and fined 25 percent of his match fees by the ICC Match Referee Chris Broad after the T20 World Cup semifinals match.