By Engr. Aamir A. Salaria, St. Louis, Missouri
The International Cricket Council (ICC) is the supreme body in the field of cricket like FIFA, IHF or other sports federations. The chief purpose of these organizations is to spread the game throughout the globe and protect the rights of its officials, umpires and referees. Their sporting codes stipulate that the decision of match umpires and referees are final and all teams and their respective boards have to abide by them regardless of their personal or individual opinions and circumstances. ICC’s Articles of Constitution as well as its bye-laws and rules governing the game of cricket, including appointment of match umpires, referees and other officials for test matches as well as ODI’s played anywhere in the world have been ratified, approved and adopted by all its members irrespective of their status (whether they are full, associate or affiliate members of ICC), including India and South Africa.
The Indian Cricket Board as well as some emotional Indian fans are unable to understand that the ICC drives its functional powers from its members and if the same members, after granting those powers to its main body, start challenging the ICC without following proper procedures, it leads to nothing but chaos, anarchy and bad days for global cricket.
Individual Indian cricketers, Indian Cricket Board Officials as well as members of the Indian cricket fraternity, can’t pass their individual judgment on a particular “On the field Incident” like that of Match Referee Mike Dennis sanctioning six Indian Test players including Star Batsman Sachin Tendulkar, by terming it as racism, color or national origin bias, discrimination, prejudice etc. They should be smart enough to understand that these cases must be addressed in various ICC forums like the Executive Board meetings. Not in their drawing rooms or press conference venues.
It may be pointed out that the Chairman of the ICC Panel which appoints Match Referees is Sunil Gavaskar, ex-Indian captain and present world record holder of making maximum number of centuries in Test Cricket. Does it imply that by appointing Mike Dennis as match referee in the second India vs South Africa test match at Port of Elizabeth, Sunil Gavaskar did not do his job rightly?
BCCI made a big mistake by not following the proper procedures. They could have played the match “under protest.” This would have still enabled them to make their point with ICC at a later stage and could have forced the ICC even to review its present laws and authority given to the match referees, umpires and other officials including the right to appeal against a decision of the match referee, code of conduct for match referees, Consistency in the penalties imposed by the match referees and whether or not match referees should be allowed to explain their decisions to the public and the media.
By not following the set procedures of its parent body, BCCI has not only harmed the noble game of cricket but has also made a mockery of the test matches as well as the role of a match referee. Let’s hope that the present crisis engulfing the entire cricket fraternity of the world comes to an end and irrespective of the final outcome, ICC’s authority must be protected and strengthened and the game of cricket should come out as a real winner.