Speed's hat-trick of cave-ins
Feb 3 2008 By Jack Bannister
The International Cricket Council completely flunked its biggest test with the craven handling of the Harbhajan Singh verbal spat with Andrew Symonds and other Australians in the Sydney Test in early January.
The world's ruling body bowed to India's blackmail threat to abort their tour of Australia if their slow bowler was found guilty of racist comments. They crumpled weakly when they allowed the appeal date to be postponed until after the third and fourth Test matches, and then made the biggest administrative error possible when total incompetence denied Justice Hansen crucial information about Harbhajan's previous record. The New Zealand High Court judge says he would have changed his final verdict and increased the punishment had he been properly informed.
The mishandled sequence of events was this: Harbhajan was reported in the Sydney Test to the umpires by Symonds and captain Ricky Ponting for allegedly calling Symonds a monkey. Match referee Mike Procter found the Indian guilty after a four-hour hearing and imposed a ban at Test and one-day level. India then refused to continue the tour unless the bans were lifted and lodged an appeal.
Malcolm Speed, chief executive of the ICC, started the awful climbdown by saying that the appeal could not be held before the next Test in Perth from which Harbhajan and Brad Hogg were dropped because of pitch conditions. By this time Hogg had also been charged with abusive language.
The dithering authorities then fiddled things so that the double hearing would take place after the fourth Test in Adelaide which ended on January 20, more than two weeks after the on-field verbals in Sydney.
And so to Justice Hansen and the final rites — or wrongs — thanks to Speed's inept staff who omitted to arm the judge with information about which he discovered a few hours too late. In poker play, the phrase often used by a winner as he discloses his hand is "Read 'em and weep."
Let the readers reach for handkerchiefs as they take in this Speed gloss. "Justice Hansen found Harbhajan Singh guilty of using abusive language against another player but not of making a racist comment."
Then came a sop to match referee Procter who was castigated 18 months ago for not becoming involved in the aborted Oval Test against Pakistan at the Oval. "Justice Hansen makes the valid point that the appeal hearing was very different to that which occurred in front of Mr Procter. The fact that the charge was downgraded is not a reflection on the process of Mr Procter's original findings."
Really? It is astonishing the spin put on bare facts by politicians and senior sporting administrators when they try to justify the unjustifiable. Procter acted too weakly at The Brit Oval and now too strongly in Speed's eyes. The other casualty was umpire Steve Bucknor who was withdrawn from the Perth Test 24 hours after Speed insisted that this could not happen because the ICC regulations prohibited any side forcing a change of scheduled umpires.
That put Bucknor is the same unseaworthy boat as Darrell Hair, and such disgusting treatment meted out by Speed & Co has dealt a mortal blow to the sovereign authority of umpires.
The statement about the downgraded Harbhajan sentence — a fine of half of his match fee instead of suspension — then contains this sentence, slipped in in the hope that readers might miss it.
"It is very unfortunate that human error led to Justice Hansen not having the full history of Harbhajan's previous code of conduct breaches and the ICC accepts responsibility for this mistake."
Well, bully for them, to admit a mistake which, when the judge was told about the stuff-up, he tried to re-open the case and impose a much stiffer sentence. Of course, the fact that he was prevented from doing his job properly had nothing to do with the fact that India was still saying that a too strong punishment would mean they would go home and not play in the current triangular tournament that started yesterday. Not much it didn't!
The Australian cricketers have never been noted for angelic dispositions but they are fair dinkum right when, as one unnamed player said after the laughable cock-up of last week: "We now know who is running world cricket. Money now talks above everything else and they have proved that what they say goes."
Speed is a lawyer and steps down from office shortly. His legacy is that he has presided over two of the biggest administrative disgraces in the history of the game, with two top umpires and a match referee having the rug pulled from under them, and India and the Asian bloc now able to do what they like.
No, make it three with the gutless handling of the Zimbabwe situation — another example of the Asian powerhouse that now rules the cricket world.
