No team has breached the ICC Code of Conduct more often in the last three years than England, according to the ICC website.
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The on-field behaviour of international cricket teams has been under scrutiny in recent years, following the ball-tampering scandal for which three of Australia’s players received lengthy bans.
Led by Tim Paine and Justin Langer, Australia have undergone a much-publicised culture shift in recent years, and the statistics bear out that their conduct has improved. Since the ball-tampering scandal, they have breached the code of conduct just twice. Only Zimbabwe have done so on fewer occasions.
England, on the other hand, have breached the code of conduct more than any other side, with 12 breaches since the start of April, 2018. These include two each for James Anderson, Jason Roy and Jonny Bairstow, and three for Stuart Broad. Broad’s three breaches since then are the most of any player in world cricket, despite him only playing in one of the three international formats.
England’s amassing of demerit points is partly down to how much cricket they have played, though even when judged by the metric of breaches per game, only Bangladesh, among Full Member sides, are worse behaved, with 0.12 offences every game compared to England’s rate of 0.11 breaches per game.
Almost all of England’s offences have been Level 1 breaches, the lowest possible. Only one of their players, Roy, has been found guilty of a Level 2 offence. In the 2019 Cricket World Cup semi-final, he shook his head, delayed leaving the field and swore after being erroneously given out caught behind. Roy was on 85 at the time, in sight of a prized World Cup knockout century against Australia, and Bairstow had used up England’s DRS review after being dismissed lbw by Mitchell Starc.
England’s Level 1 offences include five for obscene language, three of which came in a somewhat ill-tempered 2018/19 Test series against South Africa. These include Jos Buttler calling Vernon Philander a “f***ing k***head”, and Ben Stokes calling a spectator a “f***ing four-eyed c***”, three for dissent at an umpire decision, two for words said to a batsman upon dismissal, and one for abuse of cricket equipment, with Bairstow hitting the stumps with his bat after being bowled by Pakistan’s Junaid Khan in a 2019 ODI.
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In terms of overall demerit points, England are only third on the table. This is down to two ball-tampering incidents, one involving West Indies’ Nicholas Pooran, who copped five demerit points for scratching the ball with his thumb in an ODI against Afghanistan, and the other a tumultuous game between Sri Lanka and West Indies.
After Sri Lanka captain Dinesh Chandimal was accused of applying an artificial substance to the ball in a 2018 Test, Sri Lanka refused to take the field at the start of play on day three, leading to fears Test cricket could see its second forfeited game. While play did eventually resume, Sri Lanka were handed a total of 24 demerit points for the incident. A dozen of those were copped by Chandimal, for the initial offence as well as for his involvement in Sri Lanka’s refusal to resume play, while Chandika Hathurusingha and Asanka Gurusinha were each handed six demerit points.
Those four offences are Sri Lanka’s only breaches in the time period, but still mean they have the most accumulated demerit points of any team in the last three years, as well as the most demerit points per match.
