I've sent out the following to all my friends asking them to email ICC, thanking them for upholding the spirit and values of the game. It is not the content that matters as much as the fact that we can at least let them know what we think about them, and their contribution to the game they claim to love so much.
If you feel let-down by the standards of the second test match between India and Australia at Sydney, 2008, and feel it is only a continuation of the trend, please forward the mail given below to ICC at their email address :
enquiry@icc-cricket.com Use whatever subject you want. Let us see what we can do instead of simply cribbing about it.
Even if you do not want to do it yourself, can you at least forward it to all your friends who might be interested? - Sree.
Upholding the spirit of the game
Let me offer you my heartiest congratulations, on behalf of a lot of other Indians - and possibly more than half the Asians all over the world who follow cricket - for the way you have consistently upheld the spirit of the game.
Take the second test between the indisputable world Australia and, those sorry pretenders, India. How dare the Indian players believe that they could beat the ICC's pet champions in their own backyard? I mean, their win at Adelaide was a fluke - look at how Steve Waugh stopped them in that last match, and how the other Steve (Bucknor) affected their fortunes. Giving Tendulkar out LBW when the ball hits his helmet should have been clear enough, but the Indians never listen. No matter how many times you have them pulled up on disciplinary hearings - excessive appealing, slow over-rate, aggressiveness - they still refuse to realize that the odds are stacked against them for a reason.
Take this tour, for example. Ponting can take as much time as he wants to bowl his allotted overs because he has forced a decision in his last sixteen matches - whereas the Indians have had to use every single skill they possess to keep from losing - and still, they lost the first two tests. Even after Sachin was given not out during an LBW appeal in the first innings, they could not salvage the match. What business do they have to play against the likes of Ponting and co.?
Never mind that Symonds, in keeping with the spirit of his game, stood his ground for four 'dismissals' - the umpire, after all, is the last word on that issue. Never mind that Ponting, who advocates the credibility of the fielder's word over the batsman's, stood his ground when he had obviously nicked one to the 'keeper. Never mind that Hussey had nicked one himself, and then went on to score freely against an attack that had already gotten him out twice in the match. Never mind that Jaffer was bowled off a no-ball, or Dravid given out caught behind when his bat was closer to the pavilion than to the ball... never mind that to the hundreds of people who saw that match, it is not the players themselves, but the Umpires who should be awarded for the final result.
Possibly, there will be recriminations from this onslaught of misjudgments from the officials. I would like to suggest that you pass an order, much like you did a couple of years ago when commentators made criticizing bad decisions their favorite pasttime - you simply asked them not to do so - asking that replays should be allowed only for boundaries. That way, nobody can complain about bad decisions.
After all, once you've buried the game, shouldn't you at least uphold its spirit?
Oh, and by the way, there are rumors that the ICC has been taken over by the World Wrestling Entertainment and that all the finishes are being scripted. I sincerely hope that is not true - I would hate for the WWE to taint its credibility by its association with you...
Thanks, and I hope there is someone there with enough brains to understand that I was being sarcastic. I would appreciate a reply - just to show that a human eye has seen this letter - even if it contains only the stock ICC response, "This match was played in the best possible environment in the best possible manner, and we are proud of it."
Once again, I thank you for taking no action against Ponting and co (I take the liberty of including the umpires in the latter) since the invincibility of a champion is certainly what the game needs, and not the champion's integrity.
Waiting for you to screw us all through the rest of the tour, I remain, sincerely yours.
PS: Could you forward this to Mr.Pawar at BCCI too? I would have done it myself, but I do not have the BCCI's email address. I hope at least you do.