When Cricket Becomes Game of Dirty Pool : Scandal: England’s captain is fined $3,000 for improper conduct. To compound outrage, it came during a loss.

It was front-page news across Britain on Monday, with commentary and other news stories on the sports and national news pages.

For sports fans and the British way of life, it was almost unthinkable: The captain of England’s cricket team was suspected of cheating during an international match against South Africa.

It is still not clear what exactly happened or whether captain Mike Atherton’s actions violated the rules. But he was fined $3,000 for conduct that was, to say the least, not quite cricket.

Atherton was accused of wiping the cricket ball with dirt, an action that might be construed as an attempt to enhance his team’s performance against the visiting team.

The South Africans are appearing in England for the first time since they were banned nearly 30 years ago as part of the worldwide sanctions against apartheid.

They won easily over England--to the widespread dismay of the mother country, which invented the game.

But Atherton seemed an unlikely suspect.

A pleasant young fellow who played cricket at Cambridge University and later joined the professional ranks, Atherton was chosen as captain to impart a respectable image to the national team, which has had few victories recently.

Midway through Saturday’s game at the famed Lords cricket grounds, television cameras caught Atherton putting his hand in the pocket of his trousers and then rubbing the cricket ball before handing it to the bowler, who corresponds to the pitcher in baseball.

In cricket, it is forbidden to apply a “foreign substance” to the ball. It is the equivalent of turning a baseball into a “spitball.”

In the past, bowlers sometimes rubbed grease or sun cream on one side of the ball to make it curve when pitched at the batter.

Unlike American pitchers, English bowlers bounce the ball off the ground before it approaches the batter. A tricky ball with an unusual spin or bounce can confuse a batter and mean a big difference in a match.

England’s Atherton maintained, after television photos showed him rubbing the cricket ball before handing it to the bowler, that he was only wiping it dry.

But Sunday, he acknowledged to Ray Illingworth, chairman of the national team selectors and a famous cricketer, that he had put some dirt in his pocket and had used it to dry the ball before handing it to the bowler, or pitcher. Rubbing dirt onto a ball is illegal.

To many observers, it seemed a lame excuse. Was the dirt used simply to dry the ball--or to enhance its spin?

Illingworth fined his captain $1,500 for having the dirt in his pocket and another $1,500 for not mentioning the fact at an inquiry headed by referee Peter Burge.

“I am not a cheat,” Atherton said. “There were no illegal substances in my pocket.”

He explained that he had not told investigators the full story of the dirt in his pocket because “it would be misconstrued.”

But his action provoked editorial comment far and wide, with cricket specialists reviewing past charges of doctoring the ball--often made by the English against successful visiting teams such as Pakistan.

The Daily Mail said that Atherton’s actions had “sullied the honor of the England captaincy.”