M A I N   N E W S

Replace Denness, demands BCCI
Any ICC panel referee acceptable

Kolkata, November 20
The BCCI today demanded replacement of the ICC match referee Mike Denness who has handed down harsh punishments to Sachin Tendulkar and five other Indian cricketers now playing in South Africa.

Alternatively, the decisions taken by Denness against six Indian players should be kept in abeyance and then be judged by a neutral panel of reputed persons, BCCI President Jagmohan Dalmiya told a press conference here.

Denness, a former England captain, is the ICC match referee for the entire three-match Test series. The third and final Test begins in Centurion Park on November 24, and the Indian board wants him replaced for that match.

Attacking Denness for his “inconsistent” decisions “targeted against only one participating team”, Dalmiya said that the BCCI Secretary Niranjan Shah had met the ICC Chief Executive Malcolm Speed, now in Mumbai, and demanded the referee’s removal.

Speed has promised to speak to the ICC President Malcolm Gray and intimate a response to the BCCI by tomorrow, he said.

The board, Dalmiya said, had informed the ICC that it would welcome any other ICC panel referee, even from South Africa, to officiate in the third Test. “If no panel referee is available, any former cricketer of repute is acceptable to us,” he said.

Earlier, in Mumbai an angry Chairman of BCCI Selection Committee Chandu Borde today sought to know under which rules of the International Cricket Council such harsh actions had been taken against top Indian players in South Africa.

"While action against the Indian players are very severe, I want to know why no action was taken against South African captain Shaun Pollock (for excessive appealing)," Borde said.

As a wave of anger swept through the Indian cricket fraternity over the action, particularly against Sachin Tendulkar, former India captain and manager of the national squad Ajit Wadekar said: "A boy of his calibre will never do something silly like that. Sachin has always played straight and clean".

Former Test player and a board functionary Polly Umrigar said the decision was "very harsh, unjust and one-sided".

"On television, it was for everyone to see how things went by. The South African team was no exception to appealing. Even Shaun Pollock did it thrice," Umrigar said.

Wadekar, however, regretted that the Indian Board had been generally weak in dealing with some vices afflicting modern cricket.

“In the case of Sri Lankan Muthiah Muralitharan being charged with chucking, the Sri Lankan Board took a tough stand, something unlikely in India,” he said.

On the issue of excessive appeal, Umrigar said the ICC should come out with a ‘uniform code’.

Wadekar advised the team to return if match referee Mike Denness did not reverse his decision.

In New Delhi conspiracy theories had a field day and no one was willing to hear that the action against the Indians had been taken by Mike Denness, an Englishman.

If it was not for revenge, why would as many as six Indians be singled out for unprecedented punishment while the South Africans who had indulged in as bad or even worse behaviour on the field were not even noticed.

There is a mystery to how Denness took note of the alleged tampering of the ball by Sachin Tendulkar. When the first reports of the incident came, it was stated that a South African TV channel had, on its own, made the footage available to the match referee.

Former BCCI President and the President of the Punjab Cricket Association, Mr I.S. Bindra, told reporters in Ludhiana that this was a “highly arbitrary and unjustified” decision of the match referee, which smacked of aparthied. He pointed out, there seems to be two set of rules. One for the players of India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka and another for the players of Australia, South Africa and England.

Mr Bindra hoped that the BCCI president would take the issue seriously. He observed, “I personally know Mr Dalmiya  and he will not take it lightly”. The BCCI, he observed, needed to ensure that this wrong was undone and no such thing was done in future.

A former Secretary of the BCCI, Mr Ranbir Singh, said the move of the match referee was not only harsh but smacked of racism. He wanted the BCCI to take tough stance on the issue. Agencies