I suppose my fundamental misunderstanding is that an underarm bowl just seems like the obvious defensive move, not unsportsmanlike.

I said this in another comment and it seems relevant: "I know they're different, but in baseball the pitch is part of the game. Not being able to make good use of a pitch is a problem for the hitter, not the pitcher."

I think my baseballed mind simply cannot warp itself to your gentlemanly ways lol

Imagine the strike zone was just convention and pitchers were technically allowed to roll the ball if they were more bothered about preventing home runs than getting the opponent out. Think your baseball mind would be annoyed when someone did it, and the lawmakers would have to step in pretty quick to stop it being a regular thing...

(Think there's also a general prejudice against underarm play in professional sport as it's for kids who can't throw properly and feels like mockery. Underarm serves in tennis are frowned upon, even though an alert opponent has plenty of chance of scoring a point from them)

This wasn’t only underarm, but also rolling the ball over the ground.

Imagine that, in baseball, rolling the ball over the plate were considered a strike. If so, wouldn’t pitchers go for it if, at some time, all they need to do is prevent an home run (yes, I know that doesn’t happen in baseball) and wouldn’t it, subsequently, be banned?

An under-armed ball is essentially un-hitable.

The sporting thing to do is to give the batsman a chance to score but to defeat him using skill. There is no skill in bowling and underarm ball, the batsmen is not being defeated by skill.

That said, never did I imagine that cricket would interest the HN audience.

It’s because overhand bowling was just the way you bowled, so nobody considered making a rule to tell you that was necessary until someone didn’t. Imagine playing football and someone picks up the ball and- oh right ;-)

The issue is countless teams had opportunities to do this in the past - they all knew it was an option - but they chose not to. Then suddenly one team decided “well there’s no rule…” even though it was clearly established that everyone agreed not to do it. It’s not like they discovered something new, they just broke convention with no warning at a very consequential time after many teams undoubtedly could’ve done the same to them. It’s dirty.

We all saw this on the school yard as a kid and none of us appreciated it. It’s annoying to have to enshrine literally every situation into the rules. Just play the game as intended. This is part of what has made American football become less fun to watch (besides learning about CTE’s…). Soooo many rules, constantly stopping play to assess every little mm of the play. It’s boring as hell for all involved. It’s why you often hear “just let them play!”