ICC emulates BCCI – Punitive Action against Match Officials in the World Cup Final

The International Cricket Council today took a leaf out of BCCI’s book and punished its crack team of match officials, who officiated in the World Cup Final at Kensington Oval in Bridgetown, Barbados for the next ICC event – the Twenty20 World Cup. The match officials made a mistake by discussing the possibility of having to complete the game the next day, once bad light had stopped play with Sri Lanka needing 63 to win of 18 balls with their last pair in. The playing conditions for the World Cup, if followed correctly, would have meant that at this point, the match would be awarded to Australia, as the required 20 overs had been bowled in the Sri Lankan innings.

This is just like the Indian team selected to go to Bangladesh – some players dropped, a ‘young’ team selected, only for the dropped ‘senior players’ to return for an ODI series against Ireland and South Africa. The irony of the ICC appointment is that these 5 official – Referee Jeff Crowe, match umpires Steve Bucknor and Billy Bowden, the reserve umpires Rudi Koertzen and Aleem Dar, would still be available for all international cricket between today and the ICC Twenty20 World Championships! So they are considered good enough to stand in Test matches and One Day internationals, but are not good enough to stand in a Twenty20 game. Does that even begin to make any sense??? Also, they deplete the ICC’s pool of umpires precisely when it is most needed – in a tournament where games come thick and fast.

Malcolm Speed offered the following pearls on this issue: “It would have been easy to let sleeping dogs lie and pretend nothing happened,……….. But the reality is that the playing control team made a serious and fundamental error that caused the final of our flagship event to end in disarray and confusion.” The irony of this comment was clearly on him – the CEO of the ICC which conducted its “flagship” event so poorly, that it is being called the worst ever World Cup.

Like the BCCI after India’s World Cup no show, the ICC finds itself on the defensive. And like the BCCI did in response, the ICC hits out at the easiest targets – umpires who misinterpreted the playing conditions in the World Cup final. While we’re at it, lets consider how silly the playing conditions themselves were. The stipulation was that while a reserve day would be available for a match, it would be used only if a “match” could not be “completed” on the originally scheduled day. A “match” was said to have been “completed” if atleast 20 overs of the second innings had been bowled.

Now consider the following situation: Suppose Sri Lanka had need 30 runs in 18 balls, with 3 wickets in hand, and had been say 3 runs behind on duckworth-lewis when bad light stopped play (while it is the batting side which usually determines whether play actually stops, the umpires can and have in the past stopped play if they deem it to be dangerous to the fielding side). Or – what if it had rained at this point in the game? The playing conditions would have stipulated that Australia be declared the winners, and then the same commentators, (lead at the time by Mark Nicholas) would have yelled and screamed at the ICC for having stupid playing conditions.

The fact remains that Ricky Ponting’s Australians (who are no strangers to winning), jumped the gun and began their usual war dance, the moment the Sri Lankan’s accepted the offer for bad light. This was bad behaviour – even unsportsmanlike conduct if you really wanted to be straightforward. The match had not been awarded to them at that point. It was a bit like celebrating an LBW decision before it has been given! This doubtless contributed to the confusion.

Yet, the ICC, instead of conducting a comprehensive review of the situation which would have involved studying the conduct of the players, the playing conditions, the umpires behaviour and numerous other events and actually learning something from the fiasco, simply seem to have engaged in assigning blame, the end result of which is that India and South Africa will play in an ODI series shortly, where two of the umpires – Aleem Dar and Billy Bowden, are not deemed good enough by the ICC to be umpiring in their forthcoming Twenty20 Championship.

The only difference between ICC and BCCI is that ICC’s decisions are declared and explained in articulate, grammatically and politically correct English, while the BCCI’s are communicated by amateur spokesmen in poor English. The content is the same. The inconsistency of the ICC is quite glaring – in that they only punish people when they make highly visible mistakes in high profile events.