Shame old story on final day at Sydney

There have been innumerable instances of teams snatching victory from the jaws of defeat and vice-versa, but never has a team seen a match being seized from it and handed on a platter to the opposition by incompetent umpires.

A parallel that one can draw to the Sydney Test is the 1982-83 tour of Pakistan, when the umpires raised their fingers at the drop of a hat to benefit the home team, and on other occasions, refrained from doing so, again with the same objective. But gosh, Steve Bucknor and Mark Benson were neutral umpires!

India’s tour of Australia was always expected to draw the attention of the fanatic as well as the discerning, but no one had thought that it would be the officials who would hold the spotlight despite the presence of the game’s biggest stalwarts on the stage. But for the odd occasion, when Australia suffered due to bad decisions, it has been the Indians who have had to face the brunt of insipid calls that put paid to their hopes on the sojourn Down Under.

Disputable decisions are a part and parcel of competitive cricket no doubt, but at Sydney, whatever could go wrong, went wrong. There were shocking decisions, decisions that needed to be referred to the third umpire but were not, and even some that were referred to the official who had the benefit of seeing television replays, but still could not ensure justice.

The two decisions that went against India on the final day left a really bad taste in an already bitter mouth as Rahul Dravid had clearly not nicked the ball but was given out by Bucknor, and Sourav Ganguly was asked to go back to the pavilion when the TV umpire should have been summoned by Benson. Both batsmen were well set and there was no doubt that the dismissals had a bearing on the final result.

The umpires not only hit a new low but put to shame the elaborate process the International Cricket Council has in place to select its elite panel, which incidentally does not have an Indian official as none were found fit enough, but even the Australian players too have not conducted themselves like one would expect world champions to.

In fact, one wonders whether the three main protagonists from Australia would have a pang of guilt during their brute pursuance of a world record Test streak that will surely earn them the tag of ‘the bad boys of world cricket’.

Andrew Symonds has already admitted that he was out early on during his first innings century that helped him win the man of the match award, and more importantly denied India the chance to call the shots from then on. Ricky Ponting, instead of cooling the nerves of team-mates in his capacity as captain, showed his keenness to pursue an alleged racism slur by Harbhajan Singh against Symonds, and one hopes it has nothing to do with the ‘Punter’ being proved the off-spinner’s bunny once again. Ponting did admit at the post match press conference that the umpires had erred but that does not absolve him of being party to his team’s erring ways, including claiming catches when they were not clean.

The same stands true for Michael Clarke. He made up for his batting failure with a superb late spell that saw him take three quick wickets, but would know in the heart of his hearts that it was due to his claiming Sourav Ganguly’s catch in the slips that the match got to a point where he could drive in the final nail in the coffin. As everyone saw, Benson erred in not referring the decision to the third umpire, though one can’t say for sure whether that would have made a difference because Oxenford proved himself not much better than the two men in white coats when they consulted him on an appeal against Symonds when the batsman was clearly out of his ground but allowed to bat on and extricate Australia from a precarious position in the first innings.

The Indian cricket Board needs to really push the ICC on the issue and not restrict itself to a formal protest in the matter and Sharad Pawar might well pick up his phone and call up top officials of the ICC. The Board chief might have been politically correct in not making an issue when the Aussies jostled him off the stage when they were celebrating the Champions Trophy win in India, but he needs to make his voice count this time around.

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