Friday, January 11, 2008

Indian Cricket and Match Referee

Indian Cricket and Match Referee

Entire cricketing world is respiring again with relief as the Indian tour to Australia gets resumed yesterday with the practice match at Canberra. Fears of division among the cricketing nations, if not removed, at least went under the cloud cover of suspects till the ICC appeal commissioner decides the fate of the charges of so called racial comments, framed over the Indian spinner Harbhajan, by the Andrew Symonds and other Australian players during the Sydney Test of on going series.

Cricketing world is sounding with some voices of bowing of ICC before the BCCI on this controversial issue but if you look into history evidence will prove, non reasonable special behavior of match referees, going harsh with Indian or rather with the players from the sub continent always provided with a reason for the clash between BCCI and ICC. Look at the present issue, there were no audio / video proofs and even other evidences were not even sufficient to issue a warning for Harbhajan but match referee Mr. Proctor decided a three match ban for the Indian player.
This action of match referee prompted to look at some of the post records of the same person. In the year 2003 he conveniently over looked at the clash of Birayan Lara and Steev Waugh at Antigo but not hesitate to issue one match warning for the Indian captain Sourav Ganguli at Brisbane during the last Indian tour to Australia for the slow over rate bowling 9 over short, even there is provision of curtailing the match fees in the situation [For players 10% and for captain 20%] but Proctor prefer to go with level two offence and wormed Indian captain about the extreme punishment.
The same match referee Proctor went on to pose a five match ban for the past Pakistan Captain Rashid for making an appeal for a catch not taken properly against the Bangala Desh but at Sydney he prefer to keep quite when Sourav Ganguli was declared out by the way of catch taken in disputed manner by the Australian fielder Clarck not only this but he also over looked the appealing of Australian captain Ricky Pointing for taking improper catch. History will never forget the Oval Test between the Pakistan and England, where the issue of ball tempering gets more complicated shape and structure with the role played by Mr. Proctor in the same capacity of match referee.
The biggest dispute of the history between the ICC and BCCI was the 2001 Port Elizabeth issue, here once again the match referee Mr. Mike Denis was the accused of providing a space for the clash by banning six Indian players including the mighty Sachin Tendulkar. Mike Denis proposed a ban for Sachin for so called charge of ball tempering, Captain Sourav Ganguli for not keeping the players under control, Virendra Shewag for excessive appealing and one match suspended ban for S.Das, Harbhajan and Deepdas Gupta for the same reason of excessive appealing.
Hopefully the appeal commissioner will look into matter with a justifying vision and Harbhajan will come out spotless from allegations of so called racial comments. Indians have a long proven tradition of tolerance and fighting against the racialism but surely all will go behind the memories, rather out of cerebral hemisphere, if the self respect and national pride of Indians is challenged with an unnecessary and non proven blame. I am concluding this with instead of looking at dispute as the war of supremacy between ICC and BCCI or with the market oriented vision, look as the thing of national pride, honor and blame on attitude because this will not help to see and understand the dispute in true sense but will also prove help in reaching to proper and justifying decision and keeping the integrity of cricketing world intact.

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