Sunil Khanna Hony. Jt. Secretarie DDCA Delhi & District Cricket Association Ferozesha Kotla Grounds, New Delhi - 110002. India.

For Liveindia.com
It is astonishing to see and red in the media about the
banning of six Indian test cricketers including Master Blaster
Sachin Tendulkar name appearing in bail tampering case which
I feel is a deliberate attempt to tarnish his image as a
cricketer of repute produced by India. It is a reflection
of  Hansie Cronje controversy  existed and took place in
India when South Africa was on tour of this country.
The  smell of racism is felt in the cricket atmosphere
circle in many past and present test cricketers and experts
are throwing their comments open for discussion to the
masses.  It is a big question for  Mike Denness why he has
selected particularly Sachin Tendulkar as a culprit for bail
tampering, whereas he is a hardly bowler of any repute contrary
to his batting ability.
Secondly  the Electronic Media of South Africa focused
continuously on sachin's finger while he was rotating the
ball in his hand to take out the muddy grass in between the
seam. I feel South Africa media has many more things to show
besides this,  but however they focused entirely on Sachin's
interactions on the field,

Thirdly if we recall Mike Denness who is the referee of
this game was the captain of England team when his colleague
John Lever left handed fast bowler started brill cream or any
liquid cream to get shine of the ball and was caught and
no action was taken by Mr.Mike Denness as a Captain
against him where's he has recently mentioned that he is
hardly interested in newspapers and other affairs of the game.

It was also observed  that all English people from Australia
England. South Africa and even Zimbabwe have never been so
severely penalised in the past in spite of their anguish
behaviors, abuses language, used and shown to the batsman at
times  again and again.

Even in the recent test match South African Captain
Pullock was given a clean chit by the Mike Denness
whereas he continuously appealed for a  longer time to get
an LBW decision  and his face expression are quite
evident and have umpire in his side to keep his finger up till
that longer time the batsman walked off from the crease, no
action is in this regard was taken and-on the record

It is further pertinent to mention that only
South East Asian countries are subject to these harsh
decisions, fine of match fees etc. etc.
In the crucial time I would like to back up the BCCI
to take a strong decision once for all that in future
no such occurrence happens with the Indian player with a
biased opinion and role of a neutral referee should be
maintained at the highest  level.
Sunil Khanna
22.11.2001

 The most blatant example of his partisanship is clearly reflected in his banning of Virender Sewhag from participating in the next  test match on the charge of excessive appealing. Deness took exception to the manner in which he kept on appealing for a catch  against Shaun Pollock, the South African captain, when the ball had apparently hit the batsman's boot and not his bat.  Remarkably, he saw nothing wrong in Pollock resorting to intimidatory appealing against both Shiv Sundar Das and VVS Laxman  in the first innings. The argument he has reportedly offered in his defense, that the appeals fetched favorable decisions in both  cases and, therefore, were by implication justified, is breathtaking in its cavalier audacity. It ignores the fact that both decisions  were highly controversial, if not outright bad. Hence, far from being justified by their results, the aggressive appealing in both cases  had clearly succeeded in its objective of intimidating the umpire. If anything, Pollock's offence was, therefore, much greater than  any Sewhag might have committed. Yet he has not even been reprimanded! 

 If this is not a deplorable example of the application of double standards, then one does not know what is. The same goes for the  sentences handed out to skipper Sourav Ganguly (suspended ban on one test and two one-day matches) and three  others-Harbhajan Singh, Shib Sunder Das and Deep Dasgupta, who have been fined three-fourth of their match fee and handed out  a suspended one-test ban. The most outrageous verdict, however, has been given in the case of Sachin Tendulkar who has been  given the same punishment as the above three on the charge of ball tampering! If there was ever an instance of disproportionate  punishment, here was it. For not only has Tendulkar an utterly unblemished record in international cricket but he was obviously  doing no more than cleaning the ball. His failure to show the umpire what he was doing was at most an inadvertent technical  breach of the rules which should at most have fetched him a reprimand.

 Mike Denness, a largely-forgotten cricketer who once captained England, was not born yesterday. He knew what he was doing.  His decision followed consultations with the International Cricket Conference (ICC) in London. His action, therefore, cannot be  dismissed as a result of erroneous judgment. Since he could not have anything personal against the players concerned, his  decisions can only be attributed to racist bias. He perhaps did not feel the need to control it because the spineless men who run  Indian cricket never protested strongly enough when Indian cricketers were given blatantly unfair punishments in the past. It is time  things changed and the czars of Indian cricket not only took up the matter with the ICC but demanded a life-time ban on Mike Deness as a match referee.

Rajesh Chopra
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