Posts Tagged ‘ICC’

We need to come down harder on Match Fixing Culprits

Before I come down hard on the ICC and the other stakeholders in cricket, let me compliment them for having taken the right first steps in the latest match fixing scandal that has yet again engulfed cricket. We are so used to a toothless ICC that we were all surprised to see them taking the tough decision to suspend the three Pakistani cricketers accused of match fixing. What they now need to do is not back track and instead take the next few steps and bring this episode to an effective and correct close.

Had the ICC cracked the whip harder on the match fixing culprits in the past, probably, match fixing in cricket would have been a thing of the past, or at best, reduced to something which could at best be a possibility in second and third grade games. That the Pakistan players fixed a Test Match at Lord’s – the highest level of the game and that too being played at the Mecca of Cricket – tells you that they were acting without fear.

My hang heads in shame when I see the tainted former Indian captain Mohammad Azharuddin in the Indian parliament. He is a member of India’s ruling party which runs a coalition government of which Sharad Pawar, the President of the ICC is a minister with.

Match Fixing is no ordinary crime. A match fixing is a traitor in every sense of the word.

That a traitor has managed to become an MP tells you how low the Congress was ready to stoop down to increase its numbers in the Indian Parliament.

More horribly, it speaks of how easily the people of his constituency forgave Azharuddin. How could they trust a person to work for their welfare, when he had already once compromised with their nation’s honour – all for the sake of money?

It’s time that match fixing is treated as something beyond just a ‘crime of cricket’. If a petty pickpocket deserves a few days behind the bars, it is time the ICC file a further criminal charge with the police against these accused who are far more dangerous than the pickpockets.

Match Fixers should be put behind bars. For how long – let the judges in the court decide. But a mere suspension or ban is too small a punishment for too big a crime.

This time it more or less looks like an open and shut case against the three Pakistani cricketers. If the initial investigation of the ICC finds them guilty, they should hand over the case to the police to investigate and file criminal charges against these culprits.

Furthermore, the ICC should take a leaf out of the governing bodies of other leading sports of the world. The International Weightlifting Federation suspends a country, for example, if they find a number of cases from players of one country (doping).

It’s definitely high time that the ICC began to mull such a course of action against the PCB.

IPL Controversy: Time for ICC to step in and take control of cricket

The International Cricket Council (ICC), the cricket’s governing body, has been surprisingly quiet over the IPL controversy.

If a sub-committee of one of its member boards is is in such a mess and sullying the name of cricket, it ought to be the duty of the ICC to step in and take care of things, before they get worse.

As of now, the entire BCCI top brass seems to have found the most convenient solution: make Lalit Modi the scapegoat and put the entire blame on him for IPL Gate. From what we hear, barring I.S. Bindra, the entire BCCI lot and the ex-cricketers who are members of the IPL Governing Council seem to have closed ranks in suspending Modi from BCCI.

While Modi definitely must have been a party to this huge scandal, it is not possible that others were not involved.

On top of the list of suspects is the name of Sharad Pawar – the president-elect of ICC. Can we expect that more such scandals won’t occur in the world of cricket if men such as Pawar are at the helm of the cricket world’s apex body.

The ICC must ask Pawar to clear his name and that of his party member Praful Patel before he can take charge as President.

Further, the ICC must also question Pawar on the ‘approval that he gave to N. Srinivasan to become an owner of an IPL team even as he continued to be a senior official of the BCCI’. This is a most blatant case of conflict of interest that was approved by Sharad Pawar.

( It is also pertinent to ask of the Congress as to why they are not asking Praful Patel for his resignation though there is much more credible evidence against him than against Shashi Tharoor. The Congress government is desperately dependent on the NCP for numbers and are apprehensive of taking any strong action against any member of the NCP because that can peril the existence of the government itself.  )

As head of the BCCI, it should have been the morally correct thing for Shashank Manohar to offer his resignation, even if he is not party to the scandal. It was only a tweet from Lalit Modi which opened the can of worms that the IPL was; not any investigation by Messers Shashank Manohar and Co. that revealed the mess.

Money generated from IPL is benefitting private individuals and business enterprises, and not getting utilized for cricket. We can’t expect anything better from the BCCI knowing their past history. It is time for the ICC (and probably also the MCC) to step in and wrest back the control over cricket, before the BCCI destroys the character of the game completely.

Umpire Decision Review System: Stop the Nitpicking, please!

In continuation of my thoughts in support of the Umpire Decision Review System and the use of Hawk Eye by the ICC in my previous post on the same topic.

I need your advise, Mr. TV Umpire

Justin Golding, the editor of ecb.co.uk (English Cricket Board Website) writes on his piece suitably titled Doubting the Missiles against the Umpire Decision Review System that “if the authorities do not have (full) confidence in the new technology, then, it begs the question, why is it being used?”. Golding advocates his case against the Review System employing the most used argument that ‘the new system is imperfect, so where is the point in replacing the previous imperfect system with another one?’

I cannot but bang my head against the wall whenever I read or hear another rant against the Review System on the same lines. Because what the ICC is now doing is what the human race has been doing to arrive at a decision for centuries now. What does a rationally behaving human being  do when he is confused and is not able to arrive at a clear answer on something important? He consults – with his family, his friends, colleagues and one normally tries to talk to a person who he may think be an authority on the subject. Based upon the advise he gets, he may retain his original decision or reverses it if he has been duly convinced against it.

This decision making process in consultation with friends/peers/family/experts has stood the test of time. Isn’t that is what is exactly happening on the cricket field now? If a player is not convinced about the answer that he has been given by the on-field umpire, he requests the gentleman to consult with his colleague upstairs who has a few more tools at his disposal that will help them to arrive at a more ‘educated’ answer.

After a review has been asked for, the worst thing that can happen is that the original decision which was incorrect may stay. We have enough evidence now to say that the new decisions that come after the due process of consultation are definitely either ‘better’ decisions or at worst ‘as bad as the original one’.

In fact, in his entire article which runs into over 800 words, Mr. Goulding himself has nowhere claimed that the ‘new’ decisions that are arrived at after consultations with the 3rd umpire are worse than the original one. It is just a case of nitpicking and building up a false case based on a few random examples.