BOMBAY, 30 November — From the prejudicial to the contemptuous, that is how the International Cricket Council has traversed in the last few days, as it squared up to facing the biggest controversy to hit the game after bodyline and match-fixing.
While the soul-sellers-bookies complicity had succeeded in forging a rare unity of purpose in the world body, the present crisis may lead to the collapse of that facade, exposing the cracks within.
Backed by a nation that never deserts its heroes, come what may, the BCCI president Jagmohan Dalmiya has held steadfast to his stand that the game in its present state has no place for officials who dispense justice in different hues.
The entire controversy has arisen from the high-and-mighty and prejudicial manner in which the match referee, Mike Denness, had sought to enforce the Code of Conduct during the Test match at Port Elizabeth … Although punishing more than half the team, without even a report or reference by the ground umpires, must indeed reflect pre-determined bias, BCCI has never asked for the wrongs done by Denness to be righted. The validity of India’s (and South African’s) argument that such an official cannot be allowed to continue, has been grossly misunderstood.
There is no point in repeating how players of the subcontinent have been discriminated against. Poor Saurav Ganguly, who has been picked so often, must now be wary of even sneezing aloud in a remote corner of the field.
Such things will continue to happen, with complete disregard for the spirit of the game, unless the ICC members earnestly review the present system of enforcement of the code of conduct and the powers of the match referee. In keeping with the principle of natural justice, there must be a right of appeal on any punishment being meted out to players.
Every major international sport has a board of appeal at the top. Even those palpably caught for drug abuse have a right of appeal. Is the ICC match-referee thinks that he can do no wrong.
It is understood that the England team management has been fully briefed by the ECB, as well as the ICC, on what stand its should take. One hell of a piquant situation can well be anticipated, if the Indian team is announced on the morning of the match and has Sehwag in the playing eleven.
The inclusion of Virendra Sehwag, on Wednesday, in the 14-member Indian squad for the first Test was not the least unexpected, as much as there isn’t the slightest doubt that Jagmohan Dalmiya is spoiling for a fight against the high-handed functioning of the international body.
Not many people highly connected with the game are prepared to consider as justifiable the sudden and unilateral action of Denness of imposing bans on six Indian players.
It is only the chairman of the International Cricket Council, his paid staff and his own country’s officials, who are backing the match-referee. They find it convenient use the issue to settle scores with their old adversary, Jagmohan Dalmiya.
The ICC just does not want to relent even after Dennes has himself considerably watered down his own findings. His latter-day admissions have made his stern sentences now look even more ridiculous.
He first admitted that he was neither spoken to by the umpires, nor had he, on his own, asked the umpires for a report on any specific violation of the code of conduct by the Indian players. In fact, both umpires admitted to ICC that they did not find Sehwag appeal of those of other three Indians (Das, Dasgupta and Harbhajan) in the realm of excessive or intimidating.
The ICC chief executive, Malcolm Speed, clarified, the other day, that the match-referee had not received any written or oral complaints from the umpires, much less a word on Tendulkar for an alleged act of ball tampering.
Now Denness himself clarified on Wednesday that he had not charged Sachin Tendulkar with ball-tampering and said that his decision was misunderstood.
“Tampering seems to be the instant word that everyone wants to use,” Denness told am Indian correspondent, in his first reaction to the verdicts that have snowballed into a major crisis in the cricket world.
According to Denness, “Tendulkar was punished not for tampering with the ball, but for failing to call up an umpire to supervise his attempts to clean the ball,” Denness was quoted as saying.
The latest remarks contradict his own statement, released through the ICC last week, that Tendulkar had been punished for “alleged interference with the match ball, thus changing its condition”.
The ICC said Tendulkar had “brought the game into disrepute by acting on the ball”. He was fined 75 percent of his match fees and handed a suspended sentence for one-match ban.
Television footage showed Tendulkar trying to clean the seam with his fingers, but there was no complaint from on-field umpires that the ball had been tampered with. One could sense an element of regret as Dennes said: “If someone says you have got your decisions wrong and they can justify it, you can have a discussion and you can learn from it.”
With the man at the very center of the whole, big controversy that has brought the world body on the verge of a vertical split, is himself for conciliation, then why is the ICC chairman still sticking to his guns.
If today, the selection committee has included Virendra Sehwag in the team, it is another reminder that the BCCI is not going to be cowed down by all manner of threats issued by the ICC and the ECB.
It is quite on the cards that Sehwag will be in the playing eleven on the morning of the match. It is also highly likely that, if the Friday deadline goes by without the ICC moving closer to conciliation, the England team members may well be packing their bags for a return journey. With Mike Denness being exposed for his high-handedness by his own admission, the ICC must initiate moves to resolve the crisis through a direct heart-to-heart talk. The English and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) may react strongly by calling off the current tour. Does it realize what will then happen to India’s tour of England next summer? An adamant attitude will set off a chain reaction and it is not India alone which will suffer.
