All may be fair in love and war, but the business world is certainly not the first and need not be the second. It’s time we all remembered that.

English people living abroad (a category that includes me) must get used to being made fun of for coming from the nation that invented cricket (unless, of course, they’re in another cricket-playing country like Australia or India). In the USA, the saying “it’s not cricket!” — in a mock-upper-class English accent — is a typical way of expressing superiority over those sad Limeys who can’t even appreciate baseball, let alone admit the superiority of the American way of life.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not whining about about some harmless leg-pulling (the English have their own set of insulting stereotypes about Americans).What I want to suggest is that it would be a good idea to stop and reflect for a moment on what the phrase “It’s not cricket!” means and whether a little more of the attitude behind it might not be something worth recapturing.

Learning to play fair

In Britain, to say “it’s not cricket” is to point out that the other person is not behaving honestly and fairly.

For some reason, cricket was held up as a game that valued sportsmanship above all. I’m not sure why that is. Perhaps because, being a game that does not include physical contact or ritualized violence (like soccer or rugby), it allowed people to compete in an atmosphere that wasn’t charged with such strong emotions. Perhaps because of the long tradition in cricket that the umpire’s decision is always final, regardless of whether it’s right or not. Perhaps because the game proceeds slowly enough to make reflection on the finer points of playing etiquette possible.

Do children in school still learn sportsmanship: how to deal with others according to standards of civilized behavior — even when you might be able to win praise and admiration by “cheating” in some way; to be gracious in victory and positive in defeat?

Somehow, I doubt it. Cricket has a tradition of openly admiring and applauding fine play by either side. In England at least, booing, cat-calling, and generally encouraging your own side and deriding the opposition is frowned upon. Soccer fans have a richly deserved reputation for mindless, tribal violence and partisan behavior. No one ever expects cricket spectators to fight one another after a game. Cricket is not unique in this respect — American baseball and football crowds don’t fight one another in the name of their respective teams — but it is typically seen as a gentlemanly game.

Honesty and fairness is essential to long-term business success

However, this is not an article about cricket; it’s about valuing what the phrase “it’s not cricket” represents: the assumption that acting outside the rules to win an advantage is not acceptable in a civilized society.

Life tends to deal you many more defeats and setbacks than victories, so it’s not surprising if people try to get around them by cheating or subterfuge.

Yet that’s not the main source of harm to long-term relationships and business dealings. Anyone might cheat, but so long as that cheating is repudiated, swiftly and fully, by the rest, there is hope that the path to success does not depend on being a bigger liar, cheat and bastard than the next person.

‘Fair’ in business means ‘applies equally to all.’ If competition is fair, it is based on skills anyone may acquire and methods all understand. That’s the true purpose of regulation: not so much to limit innovation or entrepreneurial ideas as to create a context in which winning and losing come about openly and through actions all can undertake, if they wish.

If winning is all that matters, where does fairness arise?

In today’s macho organizations, people are told constantly that “winning is all that counts.” But if this is so (which it isn’t), how will you ever discover how to cope with defeat and failure, save with resentment and bitter feelings towards the ones who “robbed” you of the victory you thought should be yours?

Alienation, anger, sabotage, poisoned relationships — all arise from the same cause: the belief that the game was somehow rigged against you from the start. Those who cheat may win in the short term — they usually do — but the result of winning that way is to raise up a lust for revenge in the losers. I suspect one of the reasons why Yahoo fought so hard to thwart Microsoft’s take-over (and many cheered so loudly when they seemed to have won) is that Microsoft is a widely hated company. By any standards, it’s a winner, yet a large number of people long for the day it loses — and loses big.

When winners win fairly, the losers can go away with the knowledge that they can learn from their failure and maybe win next time. The game may be lost, but hope remains alive. Where winning includes cheating and rigging the game, there is no hope. Failure is absolute, as well as unjust.

It’s said that, after a war, history is always written by the winners. After a business triumph gained by dubious means, the losers may not be able to re-write the event in the short-term, but they may well have the last word later, as they plot and scheme to get their own back. Regardless of whether they play cricket or not, few nations or societies like an arrogant winner — let alone one tainted with the suspicion of cheating.

Without trust, there can be no business. Witness the crisis caused recently when banks no longer trusted one another enough to lend money to other banks. Without regulations and the determination to stick to them, despite the temptation to gain advantage by not doing so, there can be no trust.

Business exists on a gossamer-thin web of mutual trust in people and institutions. It may not be cricket, but it demands the same attitude of sportsmanship and determination to play by the rules — and the same rigid objectivity on the part of any umpires.

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