Question for Australia: is Bodyline Okay?

Pujara being hit a bodyline delivery from Pat Cummins

Is bodyline okay now?

Is anybody in the cricket media/ establishment even asking that question?

The Aussies were bowling bodyline. There is no other word for it. 

In the just concluded India-Australia series, the Aussie quick bowlers were clearly trying to hit and intimidate the batters. They targeted top order batsmen like Pujara, who took eleven bodyhits during his heroic resistance in Brisbane. They also targeted lower order batsmen like Shami, whose fractured arm deprived India of a pace spearhead.

Pujara's body-blows on the last day at Brisbane

Media coverage has been mainly about India's courage in braving this assault, not about whether this kind of assault was cricket in the first place.

The Aussie leadership behind this bodyline attack – Tim Paine and Justin Langer – are supposedly the clean-cut role-models who are creating a wholesome new culture, after the win-at-all-costs sandpaper-gate culture created by Steve Smith and Darren Lehmann. They have copped a lot of flak for sledging and losing, but not for bowling bodyline.

The leaders of the cricket world - Gavaskar, Ganguly, Shane Warne, the Waugh twins, the Chappell brothers, England’s Michael Vaughn, thoughtful commentators like Harsha Bhogle – have had little or nothing to say about this tactic. The only murmurs of protest Google could find me are on niche Indian and Kiwi websites.

Michael Atherton seems to have brought up the appropriateness of bodyline in 2017, when Mitchell Johnson was peppering the English top order as well as bunnies like Jake Ball and Jimmy Anderson with short stuff. Steve Smith, then the pre-sandpaper-gate Australian captain, dismissed Atherton's view as "a bit over the top. No doubt, if they had the kind of pace that our bowlers can generate, they'd do the same thing."

Maybe bodyline is the new normal.

Maybe anyone who complains about bodyline is a wuss.

Maybe it is just naïve to expect professional cricketers to respect unwritten codes of conduct.

Maybe.

Mohammad Shami being hit by a bodyline delivery from Pat Cummins.
Shami was sent home with a fractured arm