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Craig HillTrescothick: Mints the secret to Ashes swing
August 25th 2008 23:38
Marcus Trescothick: Sucks mints for England
Several of Australia's leading newspapers have today published excerpts from former England opener Marcus Trescothick's new autobiography where he has admitted to illegally shining the ball by sucking on mints during the 2005 Ashes series which was won by England.
Trescothick wrote in his autobiography, "Coming Back To Me":
"I was firmly established as the man in charge of looking after the ball when we were fielding,
"It was my job to keep the shine on the new ball for as long as possible with a bit of spit and a lot of polish.
"And through trial and error I finally settled on type of spit for the task at hand.
"It had been common knowledge in county cricket for some time that certain sweets produced saliva which, when applied to the ball for cleaning purposes, enabled it to keep its shine for longer and therefore its swing," he said.
Reverse swing played a crucial part in England's shock win over the Aussies in the 2005 Ashes series with the swing generated by the England bowlers - Andrew Flintoff, Steve Harmison, Matthew Hoggard and Simon Jones - proving unplayable at times.
However, artificial substances such as Murray Mints - as is the case here - is illegal because the saliva produced from sucking on these mints aided swinging. The former opener also admitted that he narrowly escaped detection during the Headingley Test after a fielding incident left his pocket full of mints all over the pitch.
"For the first time, as I dived to gather the ball at square-leg, I landed on my side and a shower of Murray Mints spewed out of my trouser pocket all over the grass right in front of the umpire," he wrote.
"Fortunately neither he nor the two batsmen seemed to take much notice as I scrambled around on all fours trying desperately to gather in the sweets before they started asking awkward questions."
Should the England cricket team be lambasted for their actions? Is this cheating? Or is sucking on sweets a common practice in cricket and that the English have only found a 'superior' form of saliva through sucking on sweets?
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