Stifled at Sydney

The nicest gesture of the Sydney Test was the Indian cricketers shaking hands with the umpires after close of play. After the umpiring outrage upon outrage that had been inflicted over the past five days, it was graceful and gracious of the injured party to keep the faith. Holding umpires guilty of incompetence 8212; leave alone willful bias 8212; is an allegation that should never be made casually. But the kind of umpiring that unfolded, day after the day from the moment the January 2 Test began, forces us to endorse a joke doing the rounds. Just as every pack of Benson 038; Hedges cigarettes carries a statutory warning, so should the umpiring combination of Mark Benson 038; Steve Bucknor.

There is already some anger against the Australians for not walking, for claiming catches that may not have been clean, for appealing for catches where there was no nick. This is misplaced. However, human error in umpiring is too much of a factor in cricket. All teams play with the notion, you win some, you lose some. And in some cosmic calculation, presumably, it all evens out in the end. In Sydney it did not 8212; the sum of the errors took the game away from India. Those errors belonged to the umpires alone. There are arguments against using technology more frequently to decide tricky appeals; these nay-sayers must consider that at a time when technology makes errors too visible, can cricket sustain suspicion and conspiracy theories drawn from this visibility?

When results of matches are perceived to be so blatantly unfair, the game of cricket itself comes into disrepute. The BCCI, as a key player in cricket administration worldwide, must take much blame. Its officials have all eyes on the bottomline, and squander their immense leverage only to ensure lucrative schedules. Today they are standing behind the Indian XI. But they helped bring India to this point. As a part of the ICC edifice, the BCCI must take more seriously its role in moving suitable changes in the way the game is conducted on the field.