Monday, November 26, 2001 A month ago, Virender Sehwag was just a one-day cricketer and a spelling mistake waiting to happen. Since then he has been a hero, making a hundred on his Test debut, in a crisis, away from home. He has been a villain, hauled up before the beak on no fewer than three charges, found guilty of all of them, and banned after only two Tests. And now he has turned into a political football.

ICC insists that he is ineligible for next week's Test match against England, on the grounds that the current game against South Africa is not a Test. The Indian board, in the menacing form of Jagmohan Dalmiya, insists that the current game is official, and therefore Sehwag has served his ban. Today, each side dug its heels in. As things stand, Sehwag is likely to be picked for Mohali on Monday, the match referee Denis Lindsay is likely to declare that game unofficial too, and England are likely to decline to play a glorified practice match. So the Test series that terrorism couldn't sink may well be scuppered by its own host.

Dalmiya said today: "In my mind the current match against South Africa is official. However, we have an open mind and if somebody can explain to us that we are wrong in assuming the match is official, we are prepared to listen."

Well, he is wrong, so let's hope he is listening now. It is worth going through this prickly issue, thorn by thorn.

1. Mike Denness's judgements
Denness's decision to punish six Indians in the Port Elizabeth Test was over-the-top. As he punished no South Africans, it was also one-eyed. From what I saw of the second Test, it was not a 6-0 situation. It was more like 4-2. And four is the number of Indians that were reported by the umpires.

2. Refs and Indians
Denness is not the first ref to come down harder on India than on their opponents. Some have read this as racism, but to do so here is to fly in the face of a crucial fact: Denness had refereed nine one-day games involving India, plus the first Test at Bloemfontein, without once punishing an Indian player. And the Indian board had agreed to his appointment. Having done so, it owed him the courtesy of putting up with him for the duration of the series. To be harsh, but not unfair, the Indian board needs to ask itself why its players attract the attentions of referees. Partly, no doubt, it is because they come from different generations and continents, and live by different codes. But partly it is because they have a captain who is a habitual offender. Sourav Ganguly is a fine player and a leader with one great feather in his cap after beating Steve Waugh's Australians, but he is also apt to be arrogant, rude and antagonistic - just the type of captain who prejudices officials against his team.

3. The referee system
This is far from perfect. Too many of the refs are either toothless or petty, and there is little consistency. There is no provision for appeals, which offends against natural justice, and there needs to be more accountability and openness. The system needs overhauling - as the ICC has recognised. But it has its good points too, and one of them is the rule, laid out with crystal clarity in the Code of Conduct, which states that the ref is independent of the national boards. They can vet him, and block his appointment, but they cannot sack him, whatever they think of his performance. Here the Indian board, and the United Cricket Board of South Africa, were both clearly in the wrong.

4. The current match
The game at Centurion is not a Test match. If it was, it would a series decider, or semi-decider: India would have been playing for a very respectable 1-1 draw, and South Africa for a conclusive 2-0 win. Neither side has played it that way. The Indians have been distracted, and their captain has not bothered to take part, citing an injury that looks a little too convenient. The home captain Shaun Pollock, who normally utters only platitudes, has said firmly that the adrenaline has not flowed and the game has been a practice match. For ICC to give it retrospective Test status, as Dalmiya is demanding, would be a lie as well as a cop-out.

5. The Test Championship
Test status used to be just that: a matter of status. But these days it also affects the ICC Test Championship. For the purposes of that table, this series must go down as a 1-0 victory to South Africa, because that is what happened in the two Tests that were Tests in the full sense of the word. The South Africans' talk of India having forfeited the third game is eyewash (their own boss, Percy Sonn, has a less delicate word for it). It was they who barred the ref from the ground. They may have been under pressure from Dalmiya, and from their rather panicky government, but it was their decision to cave in to that pressure. They put politics and finances before the game, and ended up staging only a travesty. They are lucky to be getting away without a ban. You can't run a championship of any kind in which a game takes place that isn't counted at the time but is later.

6. Public opinion
Public opinion around the cricket world is split. In India, and in the great Indian diaspora, it is less so. There is outrage and hurt, pouring out of a thousand e-mails. That is understandable, but it doesn't have to dictate ICC's response. It is a governing body, not a weather-vane. Its members have recently agreed that it should be allowed to do more governing. The thing about heated opinion is that it is irrational - heavily fuelled, in this case, by the fact that someone dared put a black mark against the world's most idolised cricketer, Sachin Tendulkar. The other thing about it is that it is fickle. If ICC kicks India out of world cricket, public opinion there may well swing round and hit Dalmiya in the face. He should ask himself how he would have handled this crisis if it had blown up during his own ICC presidency. The answer, you have to suspect, is with less than total sympathy.

7. A way forward
ICC should acknowledge the flaws in the system and pledge to fix them. It should instruct referees not just to crack down on so-called excessive appealing, but also on sledging, which is the white cricketer's No. 1 vice (although one or two others, such as Sri Lanka's Kumar Sangakkara, can give them a XXXX for their money). Steve Waugh's talk of mental disintegration should not be tolerated any more than Waqar Younis's ball-tampering habit, Ganguly's mass appeals, or a great big earful from Andy Caddick. Justice must be seen to be done, and seen to be fair. Dalmiya, for his part, should accept that he has made his point, and get on with the game.

Tim de Lisle is editor of Wisden.com and former editor of Wisden Cricket Monthly.

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