BCCI seeks to replace Denness as match referee

By Our Special Correspondent

KOLKATA, NOV. 20. The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) today asked the International Cricket Council (ICC) to replace the match referee, Mr. Mike Denness, for the third Test match against South Africa beginning at Johannesburg this weekend.

Informing this to the media, the BCCI president, Mr. Jagmohan Dalmiya, said on Tuesday that on his advise, the Board secretary, Mr. Niranjan Shah, met the ICC chief executive, Mr. Malcolm Speed, in Mumbai and demanded that Mr. Denness be replaced for the third Test.

In the event of the match referee being replaced, the Indian Board would accept any ICC panel referee from South Africa to officiate the game. If no panel referee was available, the Indian Board would accept any former cricketer of repute to stand in as the referee.

In the event of these options were not possible to accept, the Indian Board secretary asked the ICC to keep in abeyance all decisions of Mr. Denness taken during the third Test and they be judged by a neutral panel consisting of reputed persons.

The ICC chief executive was also spoken to by the BCCI president this evening and Mr. Dalmiya impressed upon him the inconsistency in the decisions of the match referee and many lapses in the procedures adopted by him. Mr. Dalmiya said the chief executive assured that he would speak to the ICC president, Mr. Malcolm Gray, in London, and would respond tomorrow. Mr. Dalmiya said the Board would await the ICC's response before deciding on further course of action.

The BCCI chief said the ICC referee's decision to penalise six Indian cricketers during the second Test had shocked the Indian team and the Board.

``The decision of the referee can be best described as being inconsistent targeted against only one participating team.''

He said such decisions did not inspire confidence in the Indian team which thought it would not get fair treatment from the referee in future. He said all the team members were extremely disturbed and, at one stage, wanted to pull out from the remaining part of the second Test being played at Port Elizabeth.

The Board president spoke to the team management as well as some of the senior players and persuaded them to get on with the game while the BCCI would take up the matter seriously with the ICC. Mr. Dalmiya said pulling out of the ongoing Test would have been unfair to the cricket lovers of South Africa and the United Cricket Board of South Africa (UCBSA).

The Board president said it was mandatory on the part of the match referee to cite reasons which influenced his decisions within 48 hours to the Board whose players have been penalised. ``Only 24 hours have passed and we are hopeful of getting the match referee's report by tomorrow. If the referee's decision to penalise the Indian players is not substantiated beyond doubt, then the ICC has powers to strike them down,'' he said.

Mr. Dalmiya, who is the immediate past ICC president, cited a precedent in this regard in turning down a decision taken by an ICC referee. He said during his tenure match referee John Reid's decision on Pakistan speedster, Shoaib Akhtar, was struck down by him because of lack of proper reasoning. The ICC Executive Board, which met at a later date, upheld the president's decision.

Meanwhile, former cricketers here reacted with shock and dismay on penalising the six Indian cricketers. National selector, Mr. Ashok Malhotra, said the decisions were ``very harsh''.

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Section  : Sport
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