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Diktat has come late! |
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By: khalid a-h ansari |
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Date:
2008-10-10 |
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Place: SYDNEY |
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 ICC match referee Chris Broad's warning yesterday to players in the current India-Australia Test series to "refrain from making inflammatory comments", although belated, was certainly called for.
However ironic in that it comes from a former Test cricketer and ICC administrator whose own controversy-riddled career was pockmarked by innumerable instances of objectionable behaviour and bad sportsmanship, Broad's injunction is on the button.
Given the acrimony of the last series between the two teams, which shall remain a blot on the good name of the game, the behave-or-else diktat should have come from the game's governing council much before the series started.
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Back you go! Ishant Sharma celebrates the dismissal of Simon Katich on Day One of the first Test of the Border-Gavaskar Trophy at the Chinnasawmy Stadium in Bangalore yesterday.
Pic/SURESH KK | Viru's anger justified
Had that been done, India's shoot-from-the-lip Virender Sehwag would not have been emboldened to make the honest, but unnecessary and ill-advised, pre-series comment about the Australians having, in effect, "cheated" earlier this year.
"We suffered the most in the catches pact during the last series," Sehwag said. "There is no point in having such an arrangement (an honour agreement on contentious low catches) when the Australians are claiming one-bounce catches."
"We'd have won the Sydney Test if they hadn't claimed catches off half-volleys in that game," Sehwag said.
Whereas from hindsight and on the basis of television replays, Sehwag's anger and that, in fact, of the entire Indian team is justified, he may not be altogether correct in his conviction, in a game of glorious uncertainties, that India would have won the Test.
After all, India lost controversially by as many as 122 runs with eight pulsating minutes remaining on the last day.
Unanimous belief
Kumble's team was unanimous in its belief that catches by Ponting and Michael Clarke were not clean and there can be no doubt that India could have drawn the Test (and therefore the series), but for execrable umpiring.
Indian captain Anil Kumble's comment after the notorious Sydney Test, to the effect that only one team was playing the series in the right spirit, has been already immortalised in the history of the game.
The Indian team, was therefore justified this time around in dismissing feelers for a repeat of the gentleman's agreement of the last series between the two captains.
That said, it was incumbent upon both teams to treat the unsavoury incidents of the past as so much water under the bridge and move on to what promises to be a smorgasbord of delectable cricket.
Sehwag's outburst cannot possibly serve any constructive purpose towards that end.
Undercurrents of rancour over debateable umpiring decisions, seemingly a hangover from Sydney '08, were beginning to show first signs of surfacing on the absorbing first day's play at Bangalore yesterday.
Hopefully Chris Broad's admonition will ensure that the greatly-anticipated series between two of the world's best teams is played in the right spirit.
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