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Julia Beffon
The United Cricket Board’s decision to side with India in the row with the International Cricket Council (ICC) over match referee Mike Denness has been condemned as ill-advised and mercenary by those who believe cricket is somehow separate from the modern world.
These are the same people, however, who would have no qualms about England cancelling the tour of India because of events in Afghanistan.
They claim that by opposing the ICC and its blind backing of Denness, South Africa has helped bring the sport to the brink of chaos.
Quite the contrary. The problem of bias bordering on racism against teams from the subcontinent has been festering for several years. South Africa has merely helped turn the spotlight on the issue.
The ICC, by its failure to take strong action in the match-fixing scandals, lost the high ground: it allowed the national federations to set the punishments, implicitly abdicating its responsibility for running the game.
For the ICC to insist now that those national federations cannot decide on the suitability of a referee is a vain attempt to re-establish some moral authority over the sport.
Recent England captain Michael Atherton, writing in the Sunday Telegraph last weekend, said: “… as a governing body of world cricket the ICC are a laughing stock”.
Match referees are often completely out of touch with the game and their inconsistencies frustrate the players.
Atherton cited the example of a Test against Zimbabwe in 1996 where the English team were threatened by the match referee with fines for having logos bigger than those permitted on their bats. In the same game, however, “Zimbabwe … bowled wide to prevent us hitting the ball and winning the match. The umpires failed to control the situation and [the match referee] was nowhere to be seen.”
What the mandarins in London seem to object to most, though, is Indian cricket board president Jagmohan Dalmiya. He is a former head of the ICC himself, yet he is portrayed as a somewhat shady businessman determined to corrupt the game.
That patronising attitude is at the heart of the row. There seems to be great resentment that the future of the game appears to lie elsewhere than in England, and outrage that South Africa could break ranks with the “white” nations by supporting India. The United Cricket Board’s decision is being painted as a financially driven sell-out.
Money was an issue, but the UCB should not have to apologise for this. With the World Cup in 2003 in mind, the possibility of an Indian boycott had to be taken into account. What was more important was that South Africa support, and are seen to support, a team that has a valid grievance.
There are some who would like this matter confined to the rules of the game. This narrow argument smacks of “keep politics out of sport” and South Africans remember well where that line of reasoning took us.