ICC Needs Afterburners on Its Backside

The only speed cricket’s leading authority possesses is CEO Malcolm Speed, otherwise it continues to be extremely slow. We have been witness to a lot of action off the field from the Harbhajan-hearing to the emergency BCCI meetings it has been the most turbulent storm to have rocked cricket in a longtime, which threatens to divide the cricket world into half. There have been accusations, apologies, threats, rebukes and denials galore from all sides concerned. But even in the heat of the action the ICC has done just what it does best – moved at its own merry, yawning pace. If Australia-India cricket ties take a pounding then the ICC should be blamed as it has not done its job.

Everyone has a view on the issue in Australia and certainly in India. Perhaps the problem is that everyone is blaming Aussie brusqueness on the field, India’s financial hegemony, umpiring errors and the sham hearing that Harbhajan had (which, without any evidence, was a travesty of just justice and against the laws of natural justice – yours truly is in a law school). Yes, that is the real problem. The ICC is not being blamed much and is watching the blame-game unfold from the fringes.

Where the hell was the ICC when Bucknor, Benson and the third umpire were adamant on taking a few wickets by themselves (no foolish Aussie-payroll-theories for me) during the Sydney test? Where was the ICC when Mike Procter was nakedly mocking the principles of natural justice and especially the most important principle of them all which calls for evidence and not bare accusations? Where was the ICC when everyone was blaming each other? Where was the ICC when a team threatened to boycott a tour? Where was ICC when two of the major cricketing powers were on the brink of severing cricketing ties?

The day we ask ourselves these questions we can get to the real problem. I have the answer, though. The ICC was happily on the sidelines, trying hard to wakeup and praying that the spotlight didn’t turn on it. The ICC could have acted swiftly by waking up to the continuous errors of its not-so-elite umpires. I can remember on many occasions when Bucknor has erred in the past 2-3 years. There have been so many instances of the umpires making lollypop-blunders on the field.

But there is very little accountability and the system of demoting umpires currently in place is far too slow, and removing an umpire from the elite panel is probably only a little less difficult than impeaching the U.S President.

The umpires need to be accountable for their performance just like players are for their form. The ICC should have more umpires on the Elite Panel and an umpires performance should be reviewed for demotion or continuation every 5 test matches (or 10 ODIs).  Removing an umpire only when it is the last option doesn’t serve any purpose and doesn’t set a good precedent.

Now let’s come to racism. The ICC has a lot of anti-racism rhetoric, however, it has no effective mechanism. The way Procter conducted the hearing can easily be taken as racial-bias.  I hope there are people with a better sense of legal principles and the laws of the game to look after matters like these and for conducting such hearings. Appoint arbitrators.

The ICC didn’t have a probe into hearing conducted by Procter because no one made a real hue and cry about it. And the ICC, as we know, doesn’t take interest in setting things right unless pushed to do so.

It is the ICC which has made a real mess. The slow moving ICC can do with more vigor and, perhaps, even afterburners on its backside. It is because of the laxity of the governing body that the game is only confined to a handful of countries. Founded in 1909, as the Imperial Cricket Conference, this snail-paced body has only added seven full members (test playing countries) to the three it had at the time of its inception. I don’t think it’s a great job. If ICC was a courier company, I would have never sent my mail or parcels through it.