John Lever's gauze band did contain Vaseline, but umpire Reuben was told that the BCCI didn't want to spoil relations with England
John Lever, the hero of England’s 1976-77 series win in India. Pic/mid-day archives
There is nothing sweet about the ball tampering row in Australian cricket, but sugar has made its way into the boiling pot. A couple of days ago, an old video clip of Australian batsman Cameron Bancroft surfaced, showing him dumping sugar into his trousers during last summer's Ashes series. What followed was talk about a possibility that the Australians could well have tampered with the ball then too, while demolishing England 4-0 to retain the urn.
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Meanwhile, Stuart Broad in New Zealand didn't exactly give the old enemy a clean chit when he said, "Look at the Ashes series we've just played, look through all of those Test matches and they reverse swung the ball sometimes in conditions you wouldn't expect the ball to reverse." This suspicion reminded me of the Vaseline affair that blew up during the third Test of the India vs Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) series in Chennai during the 1976-77 season. Bishan Singh Bedi, the then Indian captain, was reported to have expressed suspicion that Vaseline could have also been used in the opening Test at New Delhi where left-arm, debutant paceman John Lever (the main accused in Chennai) bowled England to an innings victory with 10 wickets in the match.
Bedi was convinced that Lever used the Vaseline in the gauze on his forehead to gain an unfair advantage while the England team members insisted that it was used on the recommendation of their affable physiotherapist Bernard Thomas to avoid the sweat trickling down on their bowlers' eyes. The man who found the gauze lying on the ground was umpire Judah Reuben, who I met at his Pune residence in August 2006; a little over two months before he passed away at the age of 84.
Lever had thrown it there because, according to him, it was not serving the sweat-stalling purpose. Reuben picked it up, showed it to his colleague MS Sivasankariah and walked towards captain Tony Greig, who insisted that the Vaseline gauze was needed to keep the sweat from getting into Lever's eyes. It so happened that Bedi was batting at that time and he didn't take it lying down. Lever was accused of being a cheat. The ball was even sent to the Tamil Nadu Forensic Science and Chemical Laboratory and it was no surprise that it had traces of Vaseline on it.
Lever was exonerated because it couldn't be proved that he used it to gain an unfair advantage, never mind if Law 46 prohibited "oils, waxes, resins." On the field, when Greig rushed to Lever's defence, Reuben told him: "Skipper, he can well wipe the sweat after every ball." In his book, My Story, Greig called the allegation "groundless and degrading."
Lever got tainted and saw banners like 'Cheater Lever Go Home', but he was not punished. India lost the Chennai Test and Bedi was portrayed as a man who made a big hue and cry to save his job as captain of a series-losing side. And, although he didn't like to believe then that the Vaseline affair had something to do with Northamptonshire not renewing his contract for 1977, the fact is that Northants didn't have the kind of team, which would be better off without the best left-arm spinner in the world.
Umpire Reuben was not a happy man either. "I thought I would get a medal [for the Vaseline affair], but the matter was closed. The Board [BCCI] told us [the umpires] that we will not go further into the case as our relations with England will be strained," the soft-spoken Reuben told me. That Chennai game was his last Test, since umpires had to retire at the age of 55. Reuben continued to be a fingerprint expert with the Mumbai police and told me how he would be woken up at odd hours of the night and rush to solve murder cases.
Lever wouldn't have escaped in the current scenario. Like in Cape Town, the substance on the ball didn't cause the umpires to change it, but what Bancroft and Lever did was not permissible as per the rules. My meeting with Reuben coincided with the controversy over Pakistan captain Inzamam-ul-Haq refusing to get his team back on the field at the Oval in 2006 because controversial Australian umpire Darrell Hair had ruled that the Pakistanis were involved in ball tampering. Expectedly, Reuben was on Hair's side and we ended our conversation with him saying, "They say the law is an arse. I say, a law is a law."
Reuben shouldn't be remembered only for his role in the Vaseline affair. He was a very fine umpire. In an article written for the January-March issue of Sportsweek's World of Cricket Quarterly, Sunil Gavaskar opined: "If the English umpire is rated as the best in the world, I can say safely that some of our umpires, particularly Mr J Reuben and Mr MV Nagendra, are on a par with them."
A friend of mine, who used to reside near Reuben's Mazagon home when the umpire lived in Mumbai, remembers the naughty boys from his area yelling, "Howzat, umpire Reuben!" whenever he passed by. Reuben would never be amused. Had he been alive to witness it, the current ball tampering scandal wouldn't amuse him either.
mid-day's group sports editor Clayton Murzello is a purist with an open stance. He tweets @ClaytonMurzello Send your feedback to mailbag@mid-day.com
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