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Bansal out of ICC panel of umpires

The Board of Control for Cricket in India has not re-nominated S K Bansal to the ICC's international panel of umpires.

It will be recalled that Bansal's elevation to the global panel, at the expense of the much-respected V K Ramaswamy, had raised eyebrows last year. And those eyebrows tended to shoot into the stratosphere when Bansal came up with a series of shockers - his refereeing of the Pakistan-New Zealand final in Sharjah, his LBW decisions in the one off Test between Australia and India at the Firozeshah Kotla in 1996, most especially the one against Mohammad Azharuddin; and a series of shockers during the Ahmedabad Test of the South African series.

The series of errors - whether caused by incompetence or by bias will be debated endlessly - raised questions about why Hyderabad's Ramaswamy, an official respected not only on the domestic circuit but even internationally - was not re-nominated for the 1996-1997 season. Ramaswamy, in fact, along with the now retired Piloo Reporter of India, has the cachet of having been the first ever neutral umpire to do Test duty - in Pakistan in 1986, in the home series against the West Indies.

In any event, that error has been righted, and Ramaswamy (along with Piloo Reporter also of India, the first neutral umpire to referee a Test match, is back in the international panel, the other umpire from India being, of course, Srinivas Venkatraghavan who is rated among the very best in the world.

If Ramaswamy's renomination by the BCCI is indicative of the fact that the board is prepared to take cognisance of bad performances and axe errant officials, then it raises an interesting question. Was this action taken at the behest of the ICC, or did the BCCI axe Bansal and reinstate Ramaswamy on its own initiative?

More to the point, is this initiative by the Indian board to ensure top quality officials for international fixtures going to find echoes in other cricketing boards? For instance, the likes of Peter Willey of England, and Darrell Hair of Australia to name just two, have had it even worse, perhaps, than Bansal in the season just ended. Be interesting to monitor what action the boards of other countries take, in respect of spring cleaning the roster of international umpires on the ICC panel...

Interestingly, the problem of incompetent officials also figures prominently on the agenda of the meeting of captains of the nine Test playing nations, fixed for July 11. And an ICC initiative to monitor the performances of the umpires on its panel, and to take action against errant officials, is expected to come out of the meeting.