Decision on referee a victory for India

The decision by the International Cricket Council to review the system of match refereeing comes as a major victory for India through the current cricket crisis.

In embarking on a review, the ICC is acknowledging for the first time - though indirectly - that Mike Denness could have got it wrong in punishing six Indian players for various misdemeanours in the second Test against South Africa this month.

If this is a match between the Board of Control for Cricket in India and the ICC, the BCCI looks like winning it.

The BCCI victory is likely to become evident on April 1 next year when changes to the referee system are implemented.

Those changes are now inevitable, ICC chief executive Malcolm Speed acknowledged at Lord's. The real negotiations with BCCI chief Jagmohan Dalmiya came not over dropping Indian batsman Virender Sehwag for a Test or on ICC deadlines but over the whole match referee system. That is where the ICC has decided to give in.

"Changing the rules for refereeing were a part of the discussions," Speed said. "There is no suggestion that these rules will change before April 1," he said, hinting that the rules are likely to be changed after that date.

April 1 is the time of the year when the ICC traditionally introduces new rules. These changes follow the annual meeting of ICC members. The meeting for next year is due to be held in Colombo in March.

Cricket officials indicated privately that in the face of this major concession by the ICC, dropping Sehwag from the Mohali Test, the first India plays against England on December 3, and announcing this on Saturday rather than Monday would be small change for India to give away.

Sehwag had been banned for a match by Denness on charges of over-appealing and using harsh language against the umpires. Denness also hauled up Sachin Tendulkar for ball tampering, prompting widespread criticism from India which forced the removal of the match referee.

Negotiations on changes of rules on refereeing evidently reached an advanced stage in what Speed called a "very long" three-way-conversation between Speed in London, Dalmiya in Calcutta and ICC president Malcolm Gray in Australia.

Speed said some of the changes being discussed will give players the right to appeal against a decision of the referee under certain circumstances. These three-way calls cannot resolve everything, Speed acknowledged.

But faulty refereeing was evidently central to the teleconference. And the ICC saw there were limits to backing Denness.

That realisation came through the force of Indian pressure and also through comments by a few responsible writers on cricket like Christopher Martin-Jenkins of The Times, who refused to endorse Denness's decisions as just, and a leader in The Guardian, saying Denness had been wrong. These voices were only a few in the shrill abuse generated against Dalmiya. But they helped give the ICC bosses some provocation for sober reflection.

"In the end no one will remember a match so much as the match Sehwag did not play," a leading cricket commentator said. "People will remember that India managed to get the ICC rules changed."

The ICC was not open to persuasion at first. But it has been pressured into changing the institutions it set up.

--Indo-Asian News Service

The Mike Denness controversy

Mail Cricket Editor