Player celebrations in cricket are catching up to other sports. Chris Gayle is always on hand to provide a good one on taking a wicket or scoring a hundred; Younis Khan went through a period of truly bizarre ones, including doing push-ups on getting a hundred.
He once took out a note to say how much he missed a fielding coach who had not accompanied them. Last week Denesh Ramdin produced his own note on reaching his second Test hundred for the West Indies against England.
"Yea Viv talk nah" it noted, a response to criticism from the West Indian legend Sir Viv Richards, who had questioned Ramdin's performances (this incidentally was the second time Ramdin celebrated thus: when he reached his first hundred, in March 2009, he produced a note thanking a few mentors).
Cricket has broadly chided Ramdin. The ICC fined him for it, arguing it broke a code of conduct.
But what was so wrong with it? Cricket is full of former cricketers, most of whom take potshots at today's game and its players, having long left a sport that has transformed more in just the last decade than it had done for years before.
Richards has been a regular sniper; there was some laughable talk of how his words had motivated Ramdin. As a former coach and chief selector, Richards has had opportunities to motivate players and he has failed both times.
If former champions are happy to talk and unwilling to get out from within the very histories they created, then it should be fine for those playing today to occasionally prick that bubble.
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