An inconsistent match referee highlights the need for common sense in cricket rules
Peter Robinson
Cricket likes to refer to the rules and regulations that govern the game as “The Laws of Cricket”. It’s a harmless enough conceit, but the events of the past few days do make you wonder whether it wouldn’t be a bad idea to tag “The Law of Unintended Consequences” on to the end of them.
Whether you agree with Mike Denness’s decisions or not, even if you believe it’s high time that players were held responsible for their behaviour on the field, you cannot get away from the fact that the man charged with keeping things in order has precipitated the gravest international crisis in the game since, some say, the Bodyline Series.
That’s going over the top, but it’s simply not possible to ignore the outrage and genuine sense of grievance that has gripped India. Has there been a conspiracy? Of course not. Has there been bias? This is a little trickier to answer because you can’t see into the mind of someone else, particularly someone else who claims he cannot say anything in terms of International Cricket Council (ICC) regulations.
South Africans have come to understand that prejudice can exist even if it is not intended and it’s just as harmful and damaging as if it were deliberate. The point about this is that India genuinely believe Denness has it in for them. They cannot understand why four Indians have been nailed for excessive appealing while nothing has been said, for example, for, to or about Shaun Pollock.
From this position it’s not a huge leap towards suspicions of racism, although no one yet has officially used the “R” word.
As inflammatory as this, if not even more so, is the suggestion that Sachin Tendulkar was cheating when the television cameras caught him running his fingers along the seam. The only way to understand Tendulkar’s stature as an Indian icon is to compare him with Nelson Mandela. The little master is revered in India. To call him a cheat is akin to saying that Madiba has been dipping his fingers into the Children’s Fund.
It is easy to argue that it doesn’t matter who’s guilty, justice should be impartial. Steve Waugh has said as much and he’s correct. Ball-tampering is a problem and needs to be eliminated, but the catch is no two people can be found to agree that Tendulkar was tampering with the ball.
What we saw on the television footage didn’t look kosher, but did it amount to altering the condition of the ball? Certainly, Tendulkar, whose fingernails are bitten down to the quick, wasn’t seeking to gouge chunks out of the side of the ball or lift the quarter seam both standard methods of trying to obtain reverse swing.
Was he trying to lift the main seam? Possibly, but why would he want to lift the seam of a ball only 19 overs old? By picking at the stitching or the seam at that stage he was more likely to have softened it, thereby achieving the opposite effect.
The point is that the video evidence is inconclusive. And the real point is that the whole affair should have been handled differently.
Throughout the match Denness was ensconced in the third umpire’s room, less than a pitch’s length from the players’ viewing balcony. Why, if he felt that things were getting out of hand, didn’t he wander across and let the Indians know, individually and collectively, that he wasn’t happy with them.
And while he was at it he might have had a word with the South Africans, too. It is in the nature of teams from the sub-continent to use spinners as attacking weapons. This means that, as often as not, fielders crowded in around the bat with appeals going up virtually every time the ball hits the pad.
Teams like South Africa and Australia, however, depend far more on fast bowling, and the confrontation here takes place between bowler and batsman, pretty much face to face with the slip cordon acting as a sort of Greek chorus.
The difference between the two approaches is that the so-called Western nations believe the sub-continent teams overdo the appealing, and the sub-continent sides think that, for instance, South Africa and Australia get away with murder as far as sledging is concerned. There is merit in both views.
But what happened in Port Elizabeth has pushed the ICC, that somehow has to support its match referee if the game is not to descend into anarchy, into a corner, produced uproar in India and trapped the United Cricket Board in the middle.
If that doesn’t tell you that something is wrong with the system, then nothing will. It defies belief, for example, that there is no right of appeal against a match referee’s decision. Had there been, then Virender Sehwag’s one-match ban could have immediately been held in abeyance with no loss of face to anyone.
The system is deeply flawed. Which doesn’t mean that there shouldn’t be a system, but it has to be one that is governed by common sense as well as regulation.
And as for Denness well, he was the match referee who failed to act against Dinanath Ramnarine and Mervyn Dillon when they play-acted through the closing stages of the Bridgetown Test earlier this year, ensuring that South Africa were able to bowl only 16 balls in 15 minutes. The West Indies got away with a warning. Try as you might, it would be difficult to accuse Denness of consistency.
Peter Robinson is the editor of CricInfo South Africa