The Hindu : Sport / Cricket : Forfeiture clause should be removed: Shah

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Friday, Sep 01, 2006

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Forfeiture clause should be removed: Shah

Mumbai: India will strongly back Sri Lanka if it moves a proposal to relieve umpires of their powers to decide on the forfeiture of a match, a top BCCI official said here on Thursday.

Responding to Sri Lanka's call to ICC to initiate discussions on whether umpires should be allowed to decide on this issue, BCCI Secretary Niranjan Shah said not even the match referee should be empowered to take such an extreme step.

``There should not be any clause in the laws of the game that allows for forfeiting the game. This power should not be vested even with the Match Referee, let alone the umpires,'' BCCI Secretary Niranjan Shah told PTI.

Pakistan was deemed to have forfeited its fourth Test against England at the Oval after it refused to take the field in protest against charges of ball tampering by Australian umpire Darrell Hair.

Shah said a match should be allowed to be cancelled but never to be forfeited. ``Unless there are riots or bad weather or any other unforeseen circumstances which are out of control of the organisers, the match should always go ahead,'' he said.

``Stopping the game on the pretext of any law should never be allowed because the spectators, the large number of TV audience and the sponsors should not be robbed off the opportunity to watch the game.'' — PTI

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