Can the chatter

One of the C's in ICC should stand for Confusion, following the jumbled alphabet the organisation sent out in the guise of a letter to international captains and officials asking for an improvement in on-field behaviour.

A body famous for its inertia, the speed of the ICC's response to a cancer that has been spreading for at least a decade was downright glacial. The ICC all but admitted the problem had it totally flummoxed, saying in the letter; "It is impossible to define which words or combination of words will be regarded as offensive."

The ICC doesn't need to provide a definition. What they need to do is ask umpires to report any player guilty of abusing an opponent and then make sure the first offender receives a stiff penalty. Then they should demand that captains crack down on the amount of inane chatter indulged in by their players, and ensure that any batsman who takes the law into his own hands in quieting the fielding side is awarded a medal for doing the game a belated service, rather than be reported for a misdemeanour.

If batsmen hadn't become so timid in the face of a mounting barrage, the incidence of inane chatter would have been substantially reduced. In 1980 at the SCG, the Englishman Derek Randall's constant, "Well bowled, Deadly" from silly mid-off every time I played a Derek Underwood delivery with the middle of the bat, became rather tiresome. Consequently I politely pointed out to Randall that at the first opportunity I would cover-drive his head instead of the ball if he didn't shut up. This short, sharp reminder had the desired effect and I was able to go on batting in relative quiet, which is the way a batsman should be able to conduct his business in the middle.

If, as modern players regularly assert, inane chatter is "part of the game", then why don't batsmen talk to the bowler while he's running up?

It was fascinating to read the response of some Australian players to the ICC's letter - basically along the same lines as pace bowler Stuart Clark's thoughts: "It's going to be very boring for six hours if you can't talk to one another and can't do anything like that. What is a sledge and what's not a sledge is my big question there."

I would assert the opposite: it is bloody boring having to endure the constant inane chatter, and I've never associated a hard-fought contest on the cricket field with boredom.

It seems to have become accepted wisdom that "hard men" have a lot to say on the cricket field. The two toughest opposing fast bowlers I encountered were John Snow of England and Andy Roberts of the West Indies and not one word ever passed between us on the field. Mind you, if looks could have killed I wouldn't be typing this column.

There are two adages I think have stood the test of time on the cricket field. Firstly, Plato's "Empty vessels make the loudest sound", and secondly, a common saying among cricketers, "Never upset a good player because he'll only perform better."

The act of working on the opposition's "mental disintegration", as preached by former Australian captain Steve Waugh, is premeditated and a recent phenomenon. There were words spoken on the field when I played, some of them angry, some abusive and some humorous, but they were the result of spur-of-the moment action and reaction. If someone overstepped the mark he was spoken to by the umpire, and if that didn't resolve the issue the player was reported.

The ICC has failed to earn the respect of players and, I suspect, most umpires. Not surprising when it allows the Indian board to run roughshod over it, and does nothing to rein in a recalcitrant Zimbabwe, but strongly disciplines umpires Darrell Hair and Steve Bucknor and the officials in the World Cup final debacle.

Recently the ICC has been guilty of bringing the game into disrepute on a far greater scale than the players and yet here it is asking the cricketers to raise the bar. If the ICC was to substantially lift its standards, then perhaps the players wouldn't have reason to be angry at what is perceived as unfair treatment to them, and be confused by a nonsensical letter.