Should India have forgiven Bell’s thoughtlessness?

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Controversies bloomed and the ‘spirit of cricket’ was invoked several times on an extraordinary day at Trent Bridge.
Ian Bell, whose century was made at such a rapid pace as to give his team enough time to press for a result, was the batting hero and also central figure in the day’s high drama.

He had begun to walk off the field believing tea had been taken when in fact the ball was still ‘alive’. The laws of the game are unambiguous in this matter, and the Indians were well within their right to run him out. But during the break, after Andrew Strauss and Andy Flower went up to the Indian dressing room to explain their position and Bell got another life.
M.S. Dhoni’s decision created quite a flutter, though recalling a batsman is not unprecedented. In 1973, Alvin Kallicharan was run out off the last ball of the day when he walked off towards the dressing room and Tony Greig knocked the stumps over from silly-point. After huge protest, England withdrew the appeal overnight and Kallicharan was allowed to bat next day.
Closer home, G. Vishwanath recalled Bob Taylor who had been given out caught in the Jubilee Test against England in 1979-80. Taylor put up a huge partnership with Ian Botham and India went on to lose the match. There are some other examples too, though not too many.
Should India have pardoned Bell’s thoughtlessness? Debate on this will doubtless rage for a long while, but Dhoni’s decision needs to be applauded. Stringent application of the laws can sometimes mock the game. In 1980-81, it might be remembered, Greg Chappell asked his brother Trevor to bowl underarm, which was then not illegitimate. Dhoni was brave and statesmanlike. Bell had been the Indian team’s nemesis.
But the Indian captain bought the argument that a genuine mistake led to his run out and thereby defused a crisis that could have engulfed not just this series, but spilled over into long-lasting acrimony between the BCCI and ECB.
There was, however, a flip side to this controversy also played out in the day. Former captain Michael Vaughan’s tweet asking whether V.V.S. Laxman had applied vaseline on his bat and therefore escaped being out caught on Saturday evoked protest on Twitter. Maybe he was, but one wonders whether he had not been a tad too casual in putting the integrity of a player widely regarded as the epitome of model cricket behavior under question.
Perhaps even more unseemly has been the whining of the English players about the decision in favour of Laxman. Given their strong advocacy for technology and HotSpot having shown clearly that there had been no edge, the protracted debate transcended genuine inquiry into shrill nonsense that did little to uphold the ‘spirit of the game’.
As happens in all such matters, deeds matter more than words; and on an eventful and controversial Sunday, it had come from India.