Wisden.com readers continue to react to Mike Denness's shock decisions Feedback: Day 3
Feedback: Day 2
Feedback: Day 1

Humayan Mirza
Someone needs to compare sentences awarded to different people for the same offence. Statistics do not lie - if there is a trend towards treating a particular country or people harshly as compared to others by certain referees, it will be borne out by them. Then let the real game begin by tackling the issue in the light of these statistics. Without real numbers everything is subjective.

VJ Menen
There must always be an appeals system with arbitration. It's how the judicial system works. ICC and the cricket fraternity look dismally amateurish. Cricket needs to copy the Americans with respect to how to create, implement, and execute rules in sport.

Mr Afam
I just think the Indians are a meek bunch! If Shaun is so guilty of excessive appealing, why have India never made a big deal out of that before? Instead, they have repeatedly accepted abuses, and finally, to vent their outrage, they indulge in this ridiculous show of abusing the umpire. To Sehwag: even if you were half the man you were trying to be by verbally bashing an umpire, you should have instead turned your rage on a South African. But did you have the stomach for that - does any Indian have the stomach for that? The Brits might have left the subcontinent long ago, but we feel as though we still have their shackles on us.

Shiladitya
Cricket has sunk to new depths. This affair is in freefall, rapidly spinning out of control. The Mike Denness decision does smack of bias. Surely much of the appealing by the South Africans was just as excessive. With so many guilty members surely a public word of caution should have preceeded the bans. Tendulkar, if guilty, should be punished; he certainly shouldn't be above the rules of the game. However, he should have been spoken to privately first. Denness should have acted with more guile and avoided the present disaster. He is probably still recovering from the battering he got from Lillee and Thomson in the 1970s...

The saddest thing is the immature Indian reaction to it all. Bad decisions do happen and the best way of registering a meaningful protest would have been to play the Test with black armbands and after the series appeal to the ICC. Dalmiya and the Indian media are all behaving like spoilt brats. A lot of sympathetic followers of the game have been put off by this. At the end we Indians have lost the most by being petty and unsportmanlike.

Finally ICC needs to seriously look into the consistent pattern of bias that it seems seeped in. The financial clout in cricket rests in Asia. If it doesn't mend its ways it will not take long for despots like Dalmiya to bring about a split.

Ian Hill, Slagslunde, Denmark
I am an Australian cricket fan who lives in Denmark, so I haven't even seen the video of the alleged incidents. But what many seem to be missing is that even if Denness is wrong it doesn't matter. You accept the referee's decision as you would the umpire's and get on with the game. India should have continued with the series and expressed their objections afterwards. If India refused to play the Test, ICC should have compensated South Africa financially and told them to stay out of it. For their parts in this farce, India should be suspended from Tests for a year, South Africa for six months, Lindsay should be sacked, and damn the consequences, for they shall be much less than if this action is not taken.

Was Sachin wronged? Was Denness right? Should India and South Africa have insisted on his removal? And were ICC right to respond by stripping the current match of its Test status? E-mail us at feedback@wisden.com with your views.

Views expressed are those of the reader concerned and not of Wisden Online.

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