Establishment versus "Asian Bloc"

By Shekar Mantha
September 12 2006

Recently, in the wake of the Hair/Pakistan scandal, the editors of webzine CricInfo, Andrew Miller and Martin Williamson, wrote a rather biased article against the Pakistan team. For good measure, they lumped all the Asian teams together by using the label Asian Bloc.

Hair on the other hand was portrayed as part of the Establishment, intransigent, who plays by the rules, his only crime being insensitive.

The article did little to mention that Inzamam-ul-Haq (captain of the Pakistan team) was not shown the allegedly tampered ball, that he was presumed guilty until proven innocent by Hair, and that Hair's behavior was beyond the pale in terms of civility and proper decorum (both of which are attributes of a presumably gentlemen's game).

Further, the article mentioned nothing to substantiate a conspiracy of Asian teams - in fact at the time of its writing, none of the other Asian countries' cricket boards had made any comments about the controversy. A conspiracy was certainly implied in the article by use of the term Asian Bloc.

Before I continue, a little background of my interest in cricket is in order. I am an expatriate Indian, who emigrated to the US a long time ago. While growing up in India, I was an avid cricket fan - as passionate about the sport as any other Indian. I used to be ecstatic when India won (which was rare and thus more cherished - I particularly remember the wins by the Indian team in West Indies and England) and my heart would ache when we lost. After the migration, mostly due to the lack of access to information, I lost touch with cricket.

With the advent of Internet, I became interested in cricket again. A resurgent Indian team under the leadership of Ganguly made me proud and I was hooked again - so much so that I stay up all night watching or listening to commentary of my favorite team playing my favorite sport half way across the world. This renewed interest seems to be insatiable: I gobble up all the news I can get on the sport, about all the teams in general but India in particular. CricInfo being one of the more accessible and popular sites, I was a regular visitor to that site: Anand Vasu, Dileep Premachandran, S. Rajesh and others became my cyber space heroes.

But as time went on and the initial euphoria of accessible cricket coverage wore off, I became more discerning as is wont to happen with anyone. One recurrent thing I noticed about CricInfo was extremely troubling and disappointing. I found the articles and the coverage to be more and more skewed against the Asian teams - particularly against India, Pakistan and Bangladesh and to some extent against Sri Lanka.

The editorial I mentioned at the start of this article confirmed my suspicions and I started thinking about this more. To cut to the chase, here are my observations and conclusions on the CricInfo site, the ICC, the English and Australian mainstream press and to some extent the complicity of Asian press.

The first axiom of the state of cricket is that the rules of the game are set by the English and Australians. As has been pointed elsewhere on ICF, the entire management of the board of ICC is composed of people from England and Australia. The presence of a South African of Indian descent or a Sri Lankan or a Pakistani in what is termed as high management positions is immaterial. The question to ask is, does the management team have any say in the strategic decisions taken by the ICC. Can the board, the CEO and the chairman veto any decisions taken by the people in these high management positions??

For example, consider a recent attempt by ICC to make ODIs more interesting: a specious move in the first place since ODIs are extremely popular in India and there was little evidence to show that the popularity of the game was waning except perhaps in England - which had more to do with the performance of the English team than the popularity of the game as such. To this effect, two changes were introduced: power-plays and super-sub.

I am not an expert qualified to debate the merits of these changes but what is interesting is the way these changes were introduced, and the way the super-sub rule eventually revoked. I did not read any opinions expressed by representatives of BCCI, PCB, Sri Lanka Cricket Board or the Bangladesh Cricket Board supporting such changes. Further, just before the super-sub rule was revoked, I read an article on CricInfo quoting Ricky Ponting opposing the rule. The questions to ask are: why was Ganguly (the Indian captain at that time), or Inzamam or Atapattu not asked for their opinions? Was the super-sub rule revoked because Ponting did not like it? As I said before, the point is not whether the rule was good or not but the manner in which it was introduced and revoked and the corresponding coverage of the changes.

The net effect is simple: the Asians may play good cricket sometimes but they do not have what it takes to have opinions about rules and the proceedings about the game and further who cares about what they think - their passion about the game borders on the irrational anyway.

Another example: Asian players are periodically charged with and convicted of cheating, having suspect bowling action, delaying matches or violating some obscure rule of cricket. On the other hand when Aussie, English or South African players sledge the opposition on and off the field or behave in an intimidating manner on the field, little is done to stop or silence them. Here are a few of the Asian victims of this bias: Harbhajan, Murali and Akhtar who have been called for suspect action and subsequently cleared.

If the same standards were applied to the non-Asian teams, then Brett Lee and Shane Warne should also have been tested. In fact, from my naive perspective, it seems like a lot of the bowlers should be tested. Or take the example of Ganguly: for a while there, it seemed like Ganguly was being penalized every other match for slow over rate. This confused me a lot since slow over rate was part of the English teams game plan in the 70s whenever there was a chance of them losing a test match. In any case, there is no accountability for the game referees who have targeted the Asian players, demoralized them and probably caused a lot of damage.

Another episode which can only be classified as something one would see in the TV show Outer Limits, is the case of Brian Lara snatching the ball from the umpire's hands, when Dhoni, in a recent test match between WI and India, had hit four sixes in one over. The fourth six was controversial since the ball was caught by Darren Ganga but it was not clear whether Ganga stepped on the boundary line or not. Usually in such cases, we were told, the benefit of the doubt should be given to the batsman.

Well, in this case not only was the benefit of the doubt not given to the batsman but the umpires took a long time to make a decision. Lara apparently got frustrated with the amount of time it took though it was clear that he was more frustrated by the way Dhoni was ripping apart his only specialist spin bowler. Lara's transgression extended beyond the ball snatching, when he asked Dhoni to leave the field. Again it is irrelevant whether Dhoni was actually caught or not. What is relevant is the way the ICC handled the issue. They changed the rules and said that in such cases the benefit of doubt should be given to the fielding side. The implications of this incident are enormous.

It is well known that Indian fans and consequently the BCCI generates a lot of money for ICC. This naturally should confer some clout upon them and puts them in an enviable position. Before the Indian team's visit to the WI, there were some well placed articles where WI officials were quoted as saying that the emergence of India as a cricket power was not good for the game. No one bothered to ask this official whether the money the WICB was going to make by the Indian teams visit was good for the game. The hypocrisy is obvious.

Now with this background, let us analyze the Lara incident. Lara is a great batsman who is extremely popular - that is obvious - but more importantly he is not Asian. A ruling against him would strengthen the Asian teams. But play that scenario over and reverse the roles.

Say Dravid lost his cool (extremely unlikely I admit) or better yet if Ganguly were the captain and snatched the ball from the umpires hands. What do you think the ruling would have been? We know the answer already - he would have been banned for 3 to 5 matches.

Interestingly, I did not see anyone mention this scenario in the extensive coverage this incident received in the press. Further, the ICC ruling in this matter is extremely curious. The gist of it was that they were clarifying the rules were in this case the benefit of doubt should be given to the fielding side. No one mentioned which rule it was that was vague and needed clarification. To this day I still do not know. The whole issue was buried in a couple of days and we heard nothing more about it.

I think the ICC should be asked if Lara was let off scot free because there is a tacit agreement between the ICC where WI will support the interests of England and Australia and they will do the same for WI particularly when it comes to issues relating to Asian teams? The writing on the wall as it were, seems to say, we like BCCI since it generates so much money but we don't want it to start dictating terms. One way to do this would be to garner support from all the other countries and even if it means changing the laws of the game we will be happy to do it

Le me now examine some aspects of CricInfo. That website routinely covers accomplishments of the past players and invariably they are either English or Australian and in some infrequent instances they are West Indian. Rarely do you see mentions of Asian players without a mention of discussing crowd, player or official misbehavior.

Are we to believe that the English and Australians are all good when there is plenty of evidence to the contrary? Why are Pakistani bowlers who invented reverse swing always regarded with suspicion when all bowlers use reverse swing routinely now? For a game that is dominated by batsmen, is this not an innovation that needs to be hailed and celebrated since it establishes some polarity to the battle between bat and bowl? Are there no stories to write about players like Munaf Patel or Irfan Pathan who come from modest backgrounds and are now celebrated heroes? These are such inspiring stories that books should be written about them. Are there no stories about this game, which originated in an area near Afghanistan and formalized in England and now has become one of the most celebrated sports in India? Is this not a phenomenon worth exploring with the nuance and seriousness of a Bradman innings?

The travesties of the ICC and the mainstream media are many and not all of them are subtle or finessed. With such a dismal state of affairs what do the Indian media do? On this issue I can only do a cursory analysis since I don't have access to all the Indian media. I understand from the different blogs that most of the media kowtows to the English and Australians. If I may "psychologize" for a minute, a mentality that does this must harken back to the colonial days where the Englishman had all the answers.

All this leads me to conclude that there is a bias against Asian countries in the ICC and the Western media and particularly at CricInfo. The conclusion about the ICC is not surprising since it has its roots in the English colonial past and the fact that Australia is part of this conspiracy is hardly surprising given the cultural and racial similarities of the English and Australians. The fact that WI is in this camp can easily be explained by the "win-win" situation that it creates for the ICC and the West Indies teams. The bias in CricInfo is a shame since the site was originally started by a few Indian entrepreneurs and subsequently acquired by Wisden.

Let me conclude by offering some remedies to these problems. The primary remedy in my opinion rests on the fact that the ICC is run like a totalitarian government with little transparency of its operations. Only a total transparency of its operations would help us understand the various factors that govern its decision making processes and allay our concerns of bias. I read somewhere that the BCCI's contributions make up about 80% of the revenues of the ICC - I am not sure whether this number is correct but we know that BCCI is the richest cricket board and it must be a major contributor to the ICC coffers.

Any organization that contributes so much of the revenues should have significant leverage in the ICC. Just imagine you were running a company and a major portion of your revenues came from one customer. Would you not give this customer preferential treatment and jump when they ask you to? Whereas from all news accounts, the BCCI seems to be in disagreement with many of ICC decisions and ICC seems to make a lot of decisions that displease the BCCI (the 20/20 game is one example) with impunity. This fact alone begs the question: Why does the BCCI put up with it?

To answer this question, we would need to know something of the operations of the BCCI, ICC, their revenue streams, the interests of the other boards, advertisers and underwriters. Ironically, I don't think the players and the fans matter much in this equation. I certainly don't have this information and the media is woefully incompetent in terms of reporting on these matters.

Some speculations about BCCI are possible, however. One is that it is a corrupt organization as most organizations that hold the public trust in India are. To mix metaphors, the BCCI gods have gotten hold of a cash cow and they certainly are not going to rock the boat. The other possibility is that they still have the mentality of a colonized people and are unable to stand up to the ICC in any systematic and principled fashion. There is some evidence to support both these possibilities but until more information is available they are just that - working hypotheses that needs to be proven.

Back to the ICC, I have called for a more transparent organization. I don't think we or our players (our stars really) should continue to tolerate such behavior from the ICC and the media. The actual strategy for how such a goal can be achieved would have to be the subject of another article. In the meantime I recommend for us to be vigilant for bias in the media and the decisions made by ICC officials (on and off field) and speak out. If enough of us do it, they will listen - they will have no other choice.