Miscellaneous

Prejudice and pride

Denness was out of line and Dalmiya has gone over the top. Sambit Bal calls for a ceasefire before cricket topples over

Sambit Bal
Sambit Bal
31-Oct-2005
Cricket is India's greatest unifier. It binds a nation riven by caste and creed, by economic inequalities, by factional politics and communal strife. It is a salve for our chaotic lives, a balm for our daily worries, an escape from our drudgery. It is central to our very existence: it is our faith, it validates us.
Unfortunately, it also blinds us. It blinds us to common sense and reason, to logic and level-headedness, to right and wrong. Passion is healthy, frenzy is perverse. Passion drives us to celebrate cricket as a sublime form of entertainment. Frenzy leads us to abandon the fundamental truth: that cricket, after all, is a game. The righteous ranting in our Parliament, the shrill schoolboy rhetoric of our television commentators, the screeching headlines in our newspapers and the demonstrations in our streets over a suspended sentence handed out to five Indian cricketers (including Sachin Tendulkar, yes, yes) and a one-match ban for Virender Sehwag, have managed to achieve exactly the opposite of what they intended to. Instead of serving as a catalyst for debate and reform, the matter has degenerated into an ugly confrontation between the Indian cricket administration and the ICC, and the real issues have been obfuscated to such an extent that it's difficult to recognise them.
So what are the real issues?
It is apparent to everyone that Mike Denness's punishment was harsh and unjust. But our reaction to his decision was equally over-the-top and ill-advised. What was at stake was justice, not national honour. It was not a question of the humiliation of a national icon, but whether the crime matched the punishment.
We must start by admitting that Tendulkar was in the wrong, in the letter - if not the spirit - of the law. What we saw on television was a minor infringement. One is allowed to clean the ball only under an umpire's supervision; but his violation of that rule wasn't an act that brought "the game into disrepute". At the very least, Denness's sentence warranted an explanation. It is outrageous and autocratic for the ICC to deny match referees the opportunity to explain their actions.
We will also do well to recognise that our cricketers are habitual over-appealers and they do themselves no favours by jumping down the pitch every time a ball hits the pad or a close-in catch is taken. Silly and frivolous appealing is counter-productive: it puts off the umpires and turns marginal decisions against the fielding side.
But if the alleged ball-tampering merited a one-match suspended sentence in Denness's book, nothing that Sehwag did deserved a one-match ban. A young man playing in his second Test, he admittedly got carried away. By contrast, Shaun Pollock, captain of the South African side, was playing his 60th Test. If the umpires were "intimidated" by Sehwag, Pollock's appeals should have had them running for cover. Crucially, while Sehwag's "charging" bore him no fruit, Pollock's screeching earned him a blatantly unfair lbw decision against SS Das. By banning Sehwag and penalising four others, including Sourav Ganguly for "failing to control his players", while letting Pollock off, Denness showed himself to be unjust and one-eyed.
It provided an ideal opportunity for Indian cricket administrators to rally support for sweeping changes in the way the game is run. But in a show of astounding shortsightedness and misplaced braggadocio, Jagmohan Dalmiya has managed to convert India from the aggrieved to the aggressor.
Did he have a choice, enraged cricket lovers ask? Should he have let Denness off with mere protest? Should Indians have played the Test with black arm-bands? No, he could have done more. He could have extracted a commitment from the ICC that an extraordinary meeting would be convened immediately after the series to review the functioning of match referees and that Denness would be kept out of the referee panel till this meeting was held.
And he could have warned the ICC that India would no longer accept inconsistency and double standards in the interpretation of cricket laws. By flashing the red card when a yellow would have sufficed, Dalmiya closed the options before him and allowed the ICC to claim the high moral ground.
Double standards
They have existed for more than a century now and will not go away in a hurry. The Michael Slaters, the Glenn McGraths, the Michael Athertons and the Mark Waughs will continue to get away with flouting basic norms unless there is an attitudinal change in the way cricket is governed.
Nowhere is this attitude more acutely reflected than in newspaper columns. If the Indian media has been culpable in inflaming public passions over the Tendulkar suspension, their British and Australian counterparts have been habitually guilty of blindness and arrogance. Early this year, in a case of wolf crying wolf, the Australian press ran a sustained campaign against Sourav Ganguly's lack of etiquette and respect for cricket's cherished traditions. Yet, the Australian media was full of sympathetic noises for Slater, who not only claimed a bump-catch, but was also involved in one of the ugliest confrontations with an umpire ever seen. Slater got away with a mere warning and his misdemeanour was put down in some Australian papers to extreme passion and competitiveness. The same match referee slapped a one-match ban on Ganguly for no more than glancing at his bat and then at the umpire after being given out lbw off an inside edge in Sri Lanka.
In 1994, Atherton, captain of England no less, was caught on camera rubbing dirt on the ball. He denied it at first, but when presented with incontrovertible evidence he admitted to having kept some dirt in his pocket. He was let off with a mere fine.
More recently, the two Malcolms - Gray and Speed - who run the ICC (is it a coincidence that both happen to be Australian?) were involved in covering up for Mark Waugh and Shane Warne, who had admitted to having accepted money from a bookie. And this when the Pakistan Cricket Board was conducting an inquiry into match-fixing allegations against its own players levelled by - who else? - Waugh and Warne.
The cricket boards of India and Pakistan have done more than those of any other country to root out corruption. Cronje was the only crook who was caught red-handed. Players in India and Pakistan have been banned and fined on circumstantial evidence. Ajay Jadeja can justifiably claim that he is no more guilty than Alec Stewart and Brian Lara, who have both been let off by their boards who have taken their words against those of the bookies involved.
Double standards pervade every sphere of cricket. England hosted the first three World Cups and if the English administrators had their way, all seven would have been held there. Two of the next three World Cups were held in the subcontinent, which won the rights fair and square. But a law was immediately put in place to allot the rights on a basis of rotation. There is nothing to quarrel with in this arrangement; every country should be given an opportunity to host cricket's most prestigious event. What grates is that the concept of equal opportunity was only applied after it had become apparent that England had lost its monopoly.
The balance of power
Between them, England and Australia ruled world cricket for nearly 120 years with a draconian veto power which made the voting rights of all the ICC members redundant. That, perhaps, makes it hard for them to accept the changing power equations in world cricket. The balance has certainly shifted, and it's not because India has become a stronger cricketing nation. Cricket, whether we like it or not, has ceased to be a mere game and has turned into a full-fledged enterprise. And like everything else in the free market, it is ruled by big money. Ironically, a Third World nation like India which can't afford to feed a large number of its citizens is today cricket's biggest superpower. The Indian cricket team might be a bunch of no-hopers abroad, but they are still a big financial draw because India has the world's largest captive television audience.
Dalmiya is a businessman first and cricket-administrator later. He saw the boom coming and rode it to manoeuvre himself to the top post in world cricket. A lot that is said about him in the Western media is true: he is scheming, power-crazed and vengeful. But it must not be forgotten that he restored the ICC to financial health and imparted a global vision to cricket.
It's no secret that the attitude of many members of the ICC towards Dalmiya bordered on the condescending during his tenure as ICC chief. He left the ICC under a cloud, his reputation in tatters, following an enquiry into his financial dealings.
But Dalmiya has made sure that the ICC hadn't seen the last of him, even if it has meant a comedown - to the post of BCCI president. However much the chieftains of Lord's may dislike him, they can't ignore him. And no matter how desperate Dalmiya is to shift the ICC's headquarters to Kolkata, he can't afford to dismember and tear apart the very fibre of the game.
Cricket must expand, not become ghettoised. And cricket needs India as much as India needs cricket. But it also needs a strong, energetic and non-partisan governing body. A middle ground must be found.

Sambit Bal is editor-in-chief of ESPNcricinfo @sambitbal