Ruddy Rude

Please can someone tell me…….give me some light…….Can somebody please tell me the difference between a hired assassin and a member of the ICC elite umpiring panel. Are those mistakes that they make sheer buffoonery or well calculated murder. Funnily the law tracks down assassins and hangs them or sends them to the electric chair (but in Sri Lanka they are given a different treatment) but, members of the ICC elite panel get paid for the match and get their contracts renewed to commit murderous errors also another day.

Why I call these murderous errors is because an umpire has to commit one error for a game and that could tilt the balance of a game. Then another idiotic error committed by a different umpire could alter the outcome of the whole series. For instance in the first Test, Tony Hill who was parachuted from New Zealand in the eleventh hour had only to lift the finger against a ball that whizzed past Sanath Jayasuriya’s bat and the whole Lankan batting was in disarray. At the other end Marvan Atapattu went on to score a half a century and if the umpires had let Jayasuriya get out on his own he may have scored a few more runs and the rest of the Lankan batting could have got the courage to stick around to bat along against that huge Australian first innings total.

Then in the second Test billygoated South African umpire Rudi Koertzen was not apt enough to decipher a ball that took the shoulder of the batsman and not the shoulder of the bat ruled Lankan batsman Kumar Sangakkara out who was not out on 192 and was on the verge of taking them to victory single handedly. A well executed conspiracy carried out in the nick of time.
Through my sheer inquisitiveness I asked a person in the know-how about the judging process of the so called elite umpires of the ICC. He explained that once the series is over the captains report and the match referees report is sent to ICC’s independent analyst Tony Crafter (Incidentally another former Australian umpire) and then he goes through the clippings and makes up his own assessment for his bosses. Then when I asked whether this analyst takes all the pros and cons of the match and the series into consideration when he makes his observations, the answer was negative. Come on ………if do or not agree with my arguments it is a stubborn fact cricket now is a multi million dollar business and a few decisions given in favour or against a certain team can mean a few million dollars being channelled in different directions and who can rule out other eventualities too?

How come that Rudi Koertzen keeps on following Sri Lanka like a bad dream despite his record while officiating matches involving this country? In the 2000-01 series against England in Kandy, some of his decisions made a mockery of that bad tempered match. Then in the last World Cup final this same person misinterpreted the bad-light rules and made a mockery of the match that involved Australia and Sri Lanka. Besides that he also has been accused of being involved in a match-fixing scandal in a Test that involved South Africa and England. But, life goes on regardless for Mr. Koertzen. Now even he is down to stand for the current series against England too.

Then when one takes the imbalance in the ICC Elite Panel it also looks rather amusing. Out of the ten members in the panel the majority are Australians and in order it consists of two from Pakistan -- Aleem Dar and Asad Rauf, one from England -- Mark Benson, one from New Zealand Brent (Billy) Bowden, two from the West Indies -- Steve Bucknor and Billy Doctrove, one from South Africa -- Rudi Koertzen and three from Australia -- Darrell Hair (still the contract is on), Daryl Harper and Simon Taufel. However there are none from the most populous cricket playing nation on earth – India and the smallest Test playing nation – Sri Lanka. However Australia has seen that they get the lion share there too.

At one juncture Asoka de Silva from Sri Lanka and Srinivasan Venkatraghavan – both former Test cricketers were in the ICC elite panel but their names omitted subsequently. However after the two names were dropped Sri Lanka and India have been conveniently forgotten by the ICC. The one must ascertain as to why these two umpires were shown the door. Mistakes? Then what about the repeated blunders made by Mr. Rudi Koertzen? What action has been taken by the ICC against these blunders? Do you think that dropping Koertzen for the Twenty-20 World Cup was sufficient for his mistake of misinterpreting a law which is printed loud in the cricket’s bible – the book of laws!.

However one just cannot point a finger at the ICC and sit back. Sri Lanka is also a full member of the ICC and it has its own responsibilities by the rest of the cricket loving public. If they see that a country or certain individuals are manipulating the situation they have all the right to fight for their cause and see to it that things are put in the right perspective – tomorrow may be too late. Start now and force ICC to make cricket a better place for the cricket-loving public!