When the cart pulls the horse...

Prem Panicker

On November 19-20, there was hope, a very definite promise, that the Mike Denness imbroglio could spark real, positive, change in how the game is administered worldwide.

A week later, that promise has been dissipated, that hope hijacked by a whole slew of characters each acting on motives that have nothing to do with the good of cricket. Thus:

For ICC president Malcolm Gray, the issue has become nothing more or less than a stick to beat his bete noire, Jagmohan Dalmiya, with. Ergo, we see the head of the ICC telling his listeners, on Radio Station 3AW in Melbourne on Friday 23rd November in course of an interview with Niel Mitchell, that the Indian players "attacked the umpire"! Apparently, in its desperate desire to go one up, the ICC -- and its chairman Malcolm Gray -- are not above lying to prove its point, vide the statement that the umpires in the second Test had reported four Indian players prompting Mike Denness to take action, when it appears the umpires had done nothing of the kind.

For BCCI president Jagmohan Dalmiya, the issue has become a handy excuse to go to the mat with Gray, for whom he has no love lost. Ergo, the last few days have seen the Indian board more concerned with semantics than sense -- with the entire focus shifting to whether, or not, the ongoing game at SuperSport Park is official or no. The real issue was -- and should have remained -- the decisions taken by Mike Denness and, by extension, the uneven nature of refereeing around the world. But somewhere in this ego clash between the past and present heads of the ICC, those issues have been given an indecent burial. The Indian board has put Sehwag on the bench for the Centurion game, the board has further deposited the stipulated fines in the ICC's coffers -- and if this indicates, as it seems to, that the BCCI accepts Denness' decisions then pray tell, what are we fighting about?

For the British board and its activist arm, the media, this has come as an opportunity to tee off on Dalmiya and the Indian board. Ever since the Indians mounted a dramatic coup in the mid Eighties and prised the hosting of the World Cup out of England's grasp, the latter country has lost no opportunity to go after the Indians at every opportunity. This is merely one more. (One respected member of the British media concluded a diatribe that was short on facts and long on adjectives with the question: "As for Jagmohan Dalmiya, who the hell does he think he is?" The short answer to that is, Jagmohan Dalmiya is president of the BCCI which, whether the writer likes it or not, happens to be a member in good standing of the ICC).

For the Australian Cricket Board, likewise, it has been an opportunity to vent. Much outrage has been expressed over the anarchic situation of one team and its mother board expressing lack of faith in a duly appointed ICC official, while the other board backs it to the hilt and forces said official to refrain from doing his duty. A certain amount of amnesia is involved here -- when the Sri Lankan team and its board objected to the presence of a certain Darrell Hair on the panel of umpires for a Test series, the ACB had obligingly forced the umpire in question to stand down. At that point in time, no one suggested that Sri Lanka was creating conditions of anarchy by asking a duly appointed official to be replaced, failing which it would boycott the game. Nor did anyone suggest that the Australian board was spineless, and money-hungry, when it used its muscle to make its own official stand down from a Test he had been appointed to officiate in.

Jagmohan Dalmiya, incidentally, was head of the ICC at the time -- had he, as Gray has done here, insisted that an appointed official could not be replaced, what then?

Everyone -- Dalmiya, Gray, the ACB, the ECB -- have all stuck their fingers into this pie. And none of them seems inclined to spare a thought for the real issues involved here, more is the pity. Every conceivable question is being asked -- except the one that needs to be asked, and answered.

And that question is -- why has the credibility of the ICC and its officials been so badly eroded?

Again, it is easy to dismiss the question -- and the incident that provoked it -- by saying that the Indians over-reacted. Just as it is easy to blame a fever on a change in the weather. Equally easy to blame it on the arrogance of the Indians who know that most of the money that fuels cricket worldwide comes from India.

It therefore needs reminding that the Indians were by no means the first to openly flout the authority of the ICC. That honour belongs to Kerry Packer, an Australian. More recently, when the Muralitharan chucking controversy broke out, the Sri Lankan board took the ICC head on. Even more recently, the Pakistan Cricket Board is on the mat with the ICC over the question of Shoaib Akthar.

So -- the question is, why?

And the short answer is, that the ICC has invited contempt on itself, and its officials, by failing to administer its laws, and through those laws, cricketing justice, with an even hand.

Early this year, we watched in shock and dismay as Michael Slater, on being denied an appeal for a catch (which, as it turned out, was not even fairly taken) charged up to the umpire, argued, gesticulated, and forced him to call for the third umpire's verdict. That action, alone, falls in the realm of dissent, and more importantly, intimidation. Remember, Virender Sehwag is supposed to have intimidated the umpire because, standing at silly point, took three steps forward. What then of Slater, who ran all the way up from square leg to the bowling end and stopped well inside the umpire's personal space?

Worse followed. The third umpire examined the videos, and turned the appeal down. And Slater went berserk, again storming up to the straight umpire (what was that gentleman supposed to do, overrule the third umpire?), then running all the way down to the other end of the pitch to abuse Rahul Dravid, the batsman in question. Meanwhile, Glenn McGrath, that successor to the saintly mantle of Mother Teresa, walked over from fine leg to add his share to the abuse, as did Ricky Ponting from slip. None of this was deemed to have brought the game into disrepute. And through it all, Steve Waugh -- who now makes pronouncements about the sanctity of laws -- was stood right there, in the frame, watching an incident that lasted a good four minutes or more, and no question was raised about his ability or lack thereof to control his team.

But let's not go there, even. When India went to Sri Lanka after the Australian tour, Saurav Ganguly copped it in the neck -- again, the charge was dissent, because on being given out, he stood there for a split second and looked at the umpire. When the question -- why such stringent punishment for Ganguly when Slater and his cohorts had been allowed to get away with murder -- was asked, we were told that the ICC had now decided to get really tough with offences, and this was merely the first indication of that toughness and, further, that the ICC would now get tough with everyone, regardless.

So, fine, we accepted the decision handed out against Ganguly. And hoped that the ICC, finally, meant business.

In that spirit, we will accept that Sachin Tendulkar transgressed when he cleaned the ball without referring to, or getting permission from, the umpire. We will accept that Saurav Ganguly should, standing at mid off, have somehow managed to stop Sehwag, standing at silly point, from appealing. We will accept that Deep Dasgupta had no business appealing, that Harbhajan Singh was bringing the game into severe disrepute by throwing up his hands. We will accept that all those gentlemen were guilty of dissent -- and further, that Sehwag, that Arnold Schwarzennegger in cricketing whites, put the umpire in fear of his life when he took three steps down the track with the ball in his upraised hand. And that therefore, Sehwag deserved -- more than Slater, more than McGrath, more than so many others before him -- to become the first international cricketer ever to be actually banned (as opposed to receiving a suspended sentence).

We will accept all that -- because we believe, with all our heart, that the ICC is finally serious about cleaning up the game, because we trust the ICC when it says that it will enforce its laws rigorously, without fear or favour, because we believe that the game is greater than the individual and if a Sachin Tendulkar violates a law, then let him get what is coming to him (while on that, if Tendulkar is deemed to have actually tampered with the ball, if the ICC in all honesty can say that is what he did, then we will ask that he be banned, not suspended, for three or more Tests -- provided you can prove that he actually did cheat).

And so, having accepted all that, we look around us and what do we see? We see, a day later (on the fifth day of the Port Elizabeth Test) Jacques Kallis doing to the ball exactly what Sachin Tendulkar had done the previous day. Under the eyes of the same match referee -- Mike Denness, in case you had forgotten -- who had cracked down on Tendulkar less than 24 hours earlier. And we see dead silence -- the ICC's match referee does not see the need to even summon Kallis for questioning, much less hand out sentences. And a day after that, we see, on day one of the second Test between Australia and New Zealand, Craig McMillan doing the very same thing, using his fingernails to clean the seam and, in fact, doing so at greater length than Tendulkar did. And again, the match referee there does nothing!

Are we entitled to ask why? Are we allowed to ask what happened to the ICC's determination to enforce its own laws? Are we allowed to ask why the same match referee in the space of 24 hours took such diametrically opposite stands on the same transgression?

And in similar vein, are we allowed to ask why a bowler whose delivery was declared a wide and who marched up to the umpire and remonstrated with him is not guilty of dissent, and thus of bringing the game into disrepute? In case it needs reminding, this incident belongs to the final hour of the first Test between Australia and New Zealand, in Australia -- home, incidentally, of both ICC chairman Malcolm Gray and CEO Malcolm Speed, not to mention Steve Waugh (who, again, made no attempt to tell his bowler to cut the comedy).

When we speak of a Barry Jarman allowing an Allan Donald to froth at the mouth and get away; when we talk of a Cammie Smith turning a blind eye when a Michael Slater throws a prolonged tantrum, the apologists say, for god's sake, stop harping on the past, if the ICC has made mistakes in the past, forget it, we live in a different era now.

So we won't talk of the past. But surely, the last day of the first NZ-Australia Test, the fourth and fifth days of the India-South Africa second Test, and the first day of the second NZ-Australia Test all belong to the same "ICC will get tough with truants" era?

Why then has this period -- of less than 10 days -- produced such wildly inconsistent verdicts?

And that brings us full circle, to the question posed earlier -- the ICC, and its officials, are being treated with contempt today, by those players who flout the norms openly and repeatedly get away with it (You think McGrath, to name one, cares a hoot for that "bringing the game into disrepute" bit?). And with a sense of aggrieved anger by those other players who, as repeatedly, get it in the neck.

Why? Because the ICC officials have not been able to enforce the laws they are paid to enforce with fairness and a sense of even-handed justice.

And the ICC, in turn, is being viewed with contempt -- and flouted openly -- because it is increasingly apparent that it is more concerned with covering up for the incompetence of its officials, than with facilitating the game of cricket.

These are the issues, the questions, that are being forgotten, as the Dalmiyas and Grays go to the mat to resolve questions arising out of their personal egos while irresponsible sections of the media resort to vulgar abuse (A British writer in one of his diatribes refers to South Africa as a "tinpot country". Since when? Did the Republic of South Africa become "tinpot" once the last vestiges of British colonialism were overthrown?)

The present controversy will blow over. Sooner or later this match will be declared official, sooner or later both Dalmiya and Gray will put their gloves back in mothballs and retire to lick their respective wounds.

But if this opportunity to bring a certain consistency to cricket's judicial process is lost, if the trivial is allowed to obscure the really vital questions, then we will, all of us, be merely marking time till the next controversy blows up, and the next.

And given the growing angst, one of these days, with one of these controversies, matters will in fact be carried so far that the cricket world will split in two, and the game as we know it will die.