Drawing on the recent ‘Clickgate’ incident, Professor Dan Hough of the Centre for the Study of Corruption considers what the controversy tells us about fair play, integrity and cricket’s claims to a distinctive sporting spirit.

As of 30 July 2026, just over 10m people had watched (across a range of platforms) an oddly intriguing example of cheating in English club cricket. The CSC’s Dan Hough explains what he thinks ‘Clickgate’ means for notions of the ‘Spirit of Cricket’, and indeed ideas of integrity and fair play more broadly.

Cricket does scandals differently

Cricket, by some metrics the world’s second most popular sport, has a penchant for producing rather peculiar scandals. UK-Australian relations, for example, were put under significant strain over the way that Harold Larwood, a coalminer from Nottinghamshire who could hurl cricket balls down very quickly indeed, bowled at Don Bradman in the 1932-33 ‘Bodyline’ series. Over a century has passed, but that series remains one that cricketing afficionados of today still argue over.

Then there were the three Pakistani cricketers who were prosecuted (and indeed convicted) for arranging to bowl no-balls in a 2010 match between England and Pakistan. Overall effect on the outcome of the match itself? Minimal. Amount of coverage in the global cricketing press? Significant.

Plus, in no particular order, we have had ‘sandpaper-gate’ (ending with the then Australian captain, Steve Smith, tearfully apologising to his mother on global TV), the 1979 Dennis Lillee-inspired furore of whether it was right to use an aluminium cricket bat rather than a wooden one and the then England captain Mike Atherton’s (1994) ‘dirt in the pocket’ scandal concerning alleged attempts to make a cricket ball swing. That’s not even touching on the now long list of bookmaker-related betting scandals that cricket has had to suffer.

Clicky Ponting

The recent ‘Clicky Ponting’ affair, set in the 2^nd XI competition of the North Yorkshire and South Durham Cricket League, does seem to be something else entirely though. In July 2026 video footage emerged of Brian Devine, standing at first slip, apparently clicking his fingers to mimic the sound a cricket ball makes when hitting the edge of the bat. Devine, so it would appear, has been pulling off this trick (and duping umpires along the way) for quite some time. And Saltburn CC have been merrily getting batsmen out as a result.

Is this an issue that’s going to prompt the international grumpiness that surrounded Bodyline in the 1930s? Hardly. But reactions to it have nonetheless been very revealing. 

No one has openly argued that the Saltburn players – you’d assume that Devine wasn’t acting alone and at least some of them were in on this particular act – are getting this right. It’s the focus on what this does (or doesn’t) say about cricket more broadly that’s the interesting part.

The Spirit of Cricket (in theory)

The reason for that is that cricket makes a real play of espousing something called the ‘Spirit of Cricket’. In the 1990s two former international players, Ted Dexter and Colin Cowdrey, pushed for cricket to recognise that the game is always played within the correct ‘spirit’. By 2000, a preamble to the laws (cricket is far too serious for there just to be rules; there must be ‘laws’) of the game argued that the game should be played “not only within its Laws, but also within the Spirit of the Game”.  Cricket, in other words, sees itself as having a “unique appeal” and that appeal rests firmly on the basis that the sport is somehow different (read, better) to other sports.

Is Devine’s alleged behaviour within the ‘spirit of the game’? Clearly not. But then again similar forms of cheating – punching the ball over a goalkeeper in a World Cup quarter final, say, or pretending that you’ve been bloodied in a rugby union game just to facilitate the use of a substitution you wouldn’t otherwise have been allowed to make – exist across all sports. Yet those sports don’t begin from the self-righteous starting position that their game is somehow different.

Cricket’s positively delusional sense of being somehow more morally upstanding than other sports matters as there is a clear and obvious confusion here been laws shaping action and how to deal with those who potentially overstep the line.

The Spirit of Cricket (in practice)

The one thing that debates around the Spirit of Cricket consistently reveal is a lack of consensus around what the Spirit of Cricket actually is. The principles inherent in the Spirit of Cricket are no doubt honourable, but the shapers of legitimate practice on the field are the 42 laws of the game. Who interprets those? The umpires on the field. They exercise judgement based on how they think the laws should apply in a given situation.

The only logical way of invoking something as nebulous as the Spirit of Cricket is to work out whether an act is taking place within the laws. If you don’t like the act in question even though it’s deemed legal, you need to find a way of convincing those who oversee such things to change the laws of the game.

That doesn’t per se mean that there is no such thing as a spirit of cricket. But it cannot (and does not) exist independently of the laws of the game. It is the laws that shape the way that the game is played, and any such ‘spirit’ exists within that and not independent of it.

The thing that arguably irks most is that many within the cricketing community assume that cricket is unique in that regard. Tell that to the badminton or tennis player who raises a hand in apology when a net chord goes their way. Or to a rugby player who knocks his opponent flying….before then offering him/her a hand in getting back up to their feet. The playing of any sport requires – or should require – the combatants to treat each other with a bit of respect. Why? As that’s the basis of a better society all round. Is cricket unique in expecting players to do that? No. It just thinks it is…..