BOMBAY, 30 May 2003 — The CEO of the Pakistan Cricket Board, Rameez Raja, who also comes through as one of the pleasantest personalities amongst present-day television commentators, has accused the International Cricket Council of double-standard.
This is not the first time, and perhaps, not the last, that such a derision has been mocked at the apex body in world cricket. The latest provocation, in which someone as fairly disposed as Rameez Raja has been involved, is the two-match suspension handed out to Pakistani pacer Shoaib Akhtar for ball tampering in the recent one-day series in Sri Lanka.
Raja, a former Pakistani captain and coach, has made it plumb clear that he is not defending the Rawalpindi Express, who has had more than his share of disciplinary action taken against him by PCB itself. What Raja is pointing out is that what is sauce for the goose must be sauce for the gander as well. And hereabout comes the double-standard.
Rameez was referring to a recent spate of acts of misbehavior by the Australian players, including captain skipper Steve Waugh, in the West Indies where the evil of sledging was taken to a new height. All the Australian players, not the least guilty of them, Glenn McGrath, got away unscathed, even though they were reported by the ICC match-referee.
All that the ICC chief Malcolm Gray, an Australian himself, said was that a closer look has to be taken of the behavior of the Aussie team members. This was just a stray comment in view of the scathing criticism undertaken by the Australia print media, particularly over the Waugh-Lara on-field clash of words and the nastier McGrath-Sarwan verbal clash. According to the newspaper columnists, in both cases, the Australians were terribly guilty of ungentlemanly behavior, as sledging is an offense under the players‚ code of conduct.
The television close-ups showed Shoaib Akhtar scruffing the seam of the white ball in use these days in limited overs cricket. The dividing line between cleaning the ball, which becomes dirty very soon, and indulging in deliberate acts of ball tampering is so fine that some of the former fast bowlers have even recommended that the cleaning of the ball with the nails even be legalized.
This, however, is a different matter altogether. The gist of the present issue, raised by Rameez Raja, is the lack of uniformity in the implementation of punishment for violation of the ICC Code of Conduct. Former Indian Test batsman, Gundappa Viswanath was the match-referee and he merely probed the matter brought to his notice by the field umpires, and submitted his report. The handing down of the punishment was the act of the ICC’s disciplinary committee.
The same disciplinary committee had earlier found nothing wrong with the behavior of the Australian players, which was indeed more shameful than the alleged act of ball tampering indulged in by Akhtar. In the latter case, the ball was changed immediately and no advantage whatsoever accrued to either Akhtar or the Pakistani team.
In the case of the Test match in the Caribbeans, the Australian players succeeded in disturbing the concentration of the West Indies players with their blatant acts of sledging that resulted in the home team losing the match they could well have saved. This is where the accusation of double-standard comes in. The Australians have got away most of the time, be it incidents of match-fixing (remember Shane Warren, Mark Waugh and Tim May), or acts of sledging or even questionable bowling action of Brett Lee.
The time that Akhtar was banned for “chucking” Lee was allowed to go on with his equally illegitimate bowling action. It was only the intervention of the then ICC chief Jagmohan Dalmiya that Akhtar was cleared and allowed to return to the Pakistan team. Watch Brett Lee closely when he makes one come up dangerously head-high without pitching it short, and you will see either a bent-arm or a jerk. Is there no one to question this dangerous delivery that in the last few months has feled several batsmen at the crease.
