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Unfair to the teenagers

Banning teenagers from representing their colleges and universities is an act of foolishness, writes Makarand Waingankar

ICC’s recent decision to give a clean chit and reinstate Darrell Hair has caused much speculation and debate about the legal wrangles. By reinstating the controversial umpire, the ICC has surely indicated its compromising stance to those officials who are very important in the set up of running the game on the field. And it also surrendered to the stand taken by the BCCI of disassociating itself with the Indian Cricket League.

Hair and Steve Bucknor are enigmas. Their field assessments by the captains and the Match Referees, according to the ICC, are very good but what they lack is consistency in the implementation of law in their decision making.

Though one has to agree to the fact that compared to other umpires, these two gentlemen over the years have not done badly, what irks the member countries in the sub-continent is that both have records of being unfair to the players from the sub-continent.

After battling out a few days in the court, Hair saw light that as a professional umpire the best thing would be to identify the grey areas he has in his decision making. What he observed is though his decision making process was not as faulty as it looked, it was the handling of the situations which was too intimidating for the players.

Bucknor in comparison is less intimidating. What one is unable to understand is the rehabilitation process that Hair seems to have undergone.

It does seem that Hair and the ICC have reached a compromise to avoid further legal wrangles.

Another compromise is also that Hair will not officiate any of the Pakistan matches.

Bad precedent

This definitely will set a bad precedent. Either Hair is good enough to be in the elite panel of umpires or he is not.

A decision of getting him in the panel should not have a rider which will put him under pressure and might lead him to make more mistakes. In the case of the ICL, the ICC was not in a mood to compromise and as predicted a legal battle is now inevitable with players banned from playing for their respective counties forced to move the court in the UK with the support of the ICL.

The embarrassing part is that Pakistan leg spinner Mushtaq Ahmed, who has been running through the batting line ups of the counties while playing for Sussex, managed to get the no-objection letter from the Pakistan Cricket Board to play for the ICL as well as his own county.

Of course, the IPL-ICL fight is more of ego and less of issues. Banning teenagers who are playing in the ICL from representing their colleges and universities is an act of foolishness.

Most of the colleges in India admit cricketers in the sports quota and if the cricketers can’t represent the colleges and the universities, why would they be admitted in the colleges from the sports quota?

In one decision the BCCI has deprived its teenagers of playing the game and most importantly the opportunity to excel in academics.

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