Category: Australia

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How governments deceive the public

IT’S interesting indeed when government policy is thrown open to the public, ostensibly for a debate to seek feedback on how the policy in question goes down with the masses. Most people misinterpret this to mean that the government is serious about wanting input from the great unwashed.

This is one of the great myths that is prevalent even today.

It’s something like the various ombusdmen set up in some countries to provide an outlet for the public to complain when they feel shafted by companies in some sectors – telecommunications and banking, for example.

Giving a person a chance to vent their frustrations provides a form of release. The ombudsman makes a pretence of listening – a very good imitation, I may add.

In the end, one gets little or no redress unless there is something really wrong going on and the original decision stands.

The same happens with government policy. Some bright spark decides on some policy to garner votes for the next election from a section of the populace which normally does not vote en masse for the party in government.

The best way to pretend that it is being done in consultation is to ask some other person in the party to invite a discussion – these days, that is done mostly on the internet. In years gone by, it was by issuing a white paper and then inviting people to write in with their suggestions, support or objections.

The original policy always includes a little wiggle room, concessions which the government is willing to give anyway. If the public do demand some concessions, the government then gives in on ground which it never wanted to enforce.

The public feels quite good about its activism and celebrates the ground it has gained. The government laughs all the way to the poll.

If the government is unable to get the policy through parliament because it lacks a majority of its own, then it concedes certain things to the opposition and certain others to the public. The wiggle room is always built in to the original draft.

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Indian deaths in Melbourne continue unabated

A TWENTY-ONE-YEAR-OLD Indian student was stabbed to death in the Melbourne suburb of Footscray a few days back. He is just the latest statistic in a grim tale that has gone for the last 18 months or thereabouts, with one Indian victim after another being attacked.

The police in Melbourne still refuse to accept that there could be a racial angle to the string of attacks and are yet to catch anyone responsible. Australian politicians are keen to try and use spin to convince people that the senseless violence is due to anything but an underbelly of racism in Melbourne.

There are some plain truths which people just refuse to understand. More and more countries are becoming heterogenous in terms of populations; as more and more people join a population, it is obvious that everyone will not like everything which the others do. Hence, a sense of restraint develops, a sense of being willing to let the other do his thing, as long as he lets you do yours.

If it were not for this pattern of behaviour, there would be pitched battles on the streets of every major city every single day. We would all be out there fighting like dogs over scraps of meat.

Much as each of us claims to be his own man or woman, the things which we learn to abhor, the things which we come to acknowledge as being harmful to social cohesion are defined solely by our leaders, those in authority and those who can influence public policy – politicians, religious leaders, social leaders, academics, the media, police, the army and so on.

A simple example: two decades ago, it was dangerous for gays or lesbians to even hold hands in public. Gay-bashing was not frowned upon and homosexuals were treated as though they were social pariahs. That kind of sentiment has largely gone away – due to public utterances by those in authority and a constant driving home of the message that they should be accepted as people with an alternate lifestyle.

In the case of the violence against Indians, we need educated people to stand up and condemn the racism that is fuelling these incidents. Instead, the politicians and police are in denial. They just refuse to say it out loud. Nobody has been arrested for any incident. The police must be about the most incompetent in the world, considering that they always say they are investigating the hundreds of cases that have piled up over the last year and a half.

And the irony is that right here in Victoria we have a sterling example of how some plain speaking can quell racist rhetoric and drive it underground. In the late 1990s, a woman by the name of Pauline Hanson started spouting hateful racist drivel against Asians. Her ravings were not criticised by the Liberal prime minister of the time, John Winston Howard. Instead, he chose to treat her utterances as some kind of view held by a section of society.

The Victorian premier of the time, Jeff Kennett, a Liberal too, took the right stand. He condemned Hanson’s statements in no uncertain terms, calling her a danger to society and a loony case who needed to be driven underground. He said her attitudes had no place in a modern society like that in Victoria and that they would damage business and the economy.

At every opportunity, he spoke out and did not mince his words. In large part due to his efforts, Hanson disappeared from public life after a few years. He had the balls and the conviction to call it as he saw it and he was right.

If he was still in politics and leading the Liberals, I would even go so far as to vote for the party in the state elections which are to be held later this year. Labor, which is in power, is the party of spin and media management. The situation will get worse if they come back to power but one has to see what the Libs offer before deciding to back them.

Meanwhile, more Indians will continue to suffer in Melbourne.

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Catches win matches. But then you knew that…

WHAT do you say to a wicketkeeper who has just cost you a Test win against Australia in Australia? If you are a good diplomat, you take the blame for the defeat yourself.

Australia won the second Test against Pakistan by 36 runs in Sydney yesterday. Michael Hussey, who made a gritty 134 not out, was dropped thrice – on 27, on 45 and again on 52. Even if he had been caught the last time, that would have saved 82 runs.

In all three instances the culprit was Kamran Akmal, and the bowler to suffer was Danish Kaneria. For good measure, Akmal gifted 13 runs to tailender Peter Siddle who hung around with Hussey in a partnership of 123 for the ninth wicket – he was dropped on 25 and went on to make 38.

After Australia won the game, the Pakistan captain Mohammad Yousuf took the rap himself, saying that his dismissal – he charged down the pitch and hit a ball back to Nathan Hauritz at a million miles an hour – was the turning point as he was the most experienced player and should not have gone after the bowling in that manner when it was not needed.

Indeed, that is one question that has yet to be answered: Pakistan had about three and a half hours on day four and the whole of day five to score the 176 they needed to win. Why were they in such a blue hurry? Why was the target treated as though it was a one-day target?

In the first innings, the Pakistani openers had batted carefully, eschewing all flamboyance, and raised a partnership of 109 which, to a large extent, served as the foundation for their first innings total of 333. They added 70 runs in 33.5 overs on the first session of day two, going from 14 for no loss overnight to 84 at lunch.

In the second innings, they played with panache and gay abandon, maintained a run-rate of 5 – and were both out by the time the total reached 51.

It is easy to see how the abundance of Twenty20 cricket has made many players unable to stay at the crease for a long time. In the shortest form of the game, making 45 off 15 balls is enough. But in a Test, one must make those same 45 off 90 deliveries and stay around so that partnerships are fostered.

Pakistan has always been a nervy unpredictable side. They are something like the West Indies, which once collapsed from 156 for one to 202 when chasing 208 for victory against Australia in the World Cup of 1996.

The result of either series played this summer will, thus, not be reflective of how competitive the games were. The first game in each series wasn’t overly contested, but the others have been fought tooth and nail. We don’t yet know what will happen in Tasmania but it is a good bet that Australia will win again.

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Test cricket can be exciting. But the crowds ain’t there…

AUSTRALIA has just pulled victory out of the jaws of defeat to register a 36-run win over Pakistan in a fantastic Test match played in Sydney.

But there were few people at the ground to see the game even though it was gripping stuff with more twists and turns than a corkscrew. It’s all because the administrators are greedy and charge atrocious entry fees.

Last Saturday, Victoria and New South Wales played a Twenty20 game in Melbourne as part of the annual inter-state Australian tournament. The entry fee was just $10. A crowd of 28,000 turned up, a respectable number which would fill at least three-quarters of any cricket ground in the country apart from the MCG.

When it comes to Test matches, the Australian cricket authorities make a profit even before the first ball is bowled because of the money from TV rights. Thus, they are really not bothered whether people come to see the game or not. There is no incentive for them to keep prices low so that the stadium gets filled.

The attitude is that people can come and see the game if they want. There is no coverage on TV in the city where the game is played so the public really has no option. Australian radio was pretty good as far as Test commentary went but these days it is ordinary and quite trivial; many people have given up on it as the commentators are self-absorbed, ignorant and, at times, quite redneck in their utterances.

The numbers attending Test matches are falling rapidly. In a big ground like the famous MCG in Melbourne, it really shows as the ground can hold nearly 100,000. When a quarter of the ground, mostly the cheapest seats and the members seats, are the only ones occupied, then you know that the public have been driven away successfully.

Another reason why people stay away from Tests is because of the over-zealous security people. In many cases, the only thing that one has to be wary of is the security people themselves who are officious to the nth degree. The enjoyment of being at the cricket has gone.

The administrators of the game are not overly concerned. They continue to try and deny that there is a problem by employing spin of which even Shane Warne would be proud. They pretend that there is no problem and then the need to talk about it automatically goes away.

In many ways, the fact that Australia won today will serve the team badly as several problems will remain unaddressed. A spinner who does not deserve to be in the team took five wickets – not a single one by bowling well but all due to false strokes by batsmen. There will be no questions raised about him.

There are a couple of players in the team whose position needs to be scrutinised but that will not happen either. There is a captain who should not be playing due to an injury – the man is 35 and his performance and decisions need some questioning. That will not happen.

Mediocre performances by mediocre players also serve to drive the public away. Test cricket is supposed to be the pinnacle of the game but this is more like a trough. And the administrators? Oh, they are too busy laughing all the way to the bank.

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How did Nathan Hauritz ever get into the Australian team?

YESTERDAY, for the first time in his first-class cricket career, Nathan Hauritz, an alleged off-spinner from New South Wales who is in the Australian team, took five wickets in an innings.

I use the word alleged because I was used to be able to turn the ball more when I was a kid than Hauritz can.

Which begs the question: is Australia, a leading cricket nation, so short of spinning talent? Was he the best candidate among the myriad spinners in the country?

Or does the fact that he is from New South Wales count more than any ability?

The five wickets he took yesterday were mostly flukes. The only wicket in which he had some kind of role was that of the Pakistan skipper Mohammad Yousuf, the only real Test-class player in the current Pakistan team.

Yousuf played forward and spooned a catch to Simon Katich at silly point. The ball bounced on him unexpectedly. But even in this case there was a mitigating factor – the end of the innings was nigh and Yousuf was well aware that with eight wickets down, and 172 runs to get, Pakistan had no hope in hell of winning.

There were nearly two full sessions of play left so a draw was out of the question as well. Hence, Yousuf was unlikely to have been concentrating as much as he normally does.

A good off-spinner normally gets the ball to spin from outside the off-stump into off and middle; Hauritz bowled Faisal Iqbal on day four with a ball that turned a good deal. But the extent to which this was a fluke was apparent thereafter for Hauritz never managed to repeat this kind of delivery in the innings.

And Hauritz got this wicket when he had not even bowled 10 overs. He bowled 24 in all. Iqbal fell at 116 and Pakistan scored a total of 250. He had plenty of time to do a repeat.

This raises questions about Hauritz’s accuracy; he saw where the ball pitched when he got that degree of turn and could never land a ball in the same patch again.

For many years, Australia never needed to think about a spin bowler as Shane Warne was around. When Warne wasn’t fit (or was suspended), Stuart MacGill was there and he could turn the ball even on glass.

Warne retired in 2007 and MacGill followed soon thereafter, necessitating a search by the selectors.

There are plenty of good spinners in the country and the selectors picked an able man, Jason Krezja, and sent him to India last year. Bear in mind, that even Warne has not fared well in that country – his wickets have cost him more than 50 runs apiece and many Indian batsmen have hammered the hell out of him.

Krezja’s first effort was a return of 8 for 215; he attacked the batsmen, copped a bit of stick from the Indians (who are, without doubt, the world’s best players of spin) but still got wickets.

He was promptly dropped. The innocuous Hauritz was brought in. The only factor in his favour was that he is from NSW which dominates Australian cricket.

Hauritz rarely gets the ball to turn. He rarely gives the ball any air. He is, in many ways, incompetent at his trade. And yet he plays Test after Test, though he has never put in a match-winning performance.

Even the five-wicket haul against Pakistan was not a match-winning performance. It was pure chance. What he deserved was probably two wickets.

The match-winning deliveries came from Mitchell Johnson; two gems just outside the off-stump which brought him two wickets in successive balls, though one of them was a bump catch claimed (and given) by Brad Haddin. (With this, the Australian wicketkeeper added one more to his list of dubious appeals).

One more point to note is that ever since the Pakistan offie Saqlain Mushtaq developed a ball which could spin the other way (and named it “doosra” which in Urdu means “the second one”), every off-spinner of any standing has managed to bowl a similar ball.

Hauritz is still unable to bowl this ball – which would be the leg-spinner’s regulation delivery. And he is 28.

And remember this was his 11th Test. He has played against India, England, Pakistan, the West Indies, South Africa and New Zealand. He has bowled in India, England and Australia.

And yet no five-wicket haul. Krezja was dropped after taking 13 wickets in two Tests. Hauritz, with 41 in 11 Tests, including those five, is now the Australian spin bowler. It’s highly unlikely that Australia will play two spinners as long as Ricky Ponting is captain.

But the myth has been created, the myth that Hauritz is a “match-winner”. This will make it even more difficult for anyone else to get a look in. He has managed 10 Tests without looking like a decent bowler until luck smiled on him.

And I’m willing to bet that it will be at least 20 more Tests before people realise that he is a mug. Bear in mind that this is a country which has produced the likes of Ashley Mallett, John Gleeson, Richie Benaud, Warne, MacGill, Tim May, Terry Jenner and the occasionals like Bob Holland, to name just a few.

Warne has just identified a youngster named Steven Smith whom he rates as capable. And that’s praise from the very best in the trade. Smith is from NSW too but Warne’s blessing means that he has some talent.

It’s a sad state of affairs. Much like the case of Haddin. It’s the NSW factor. Something like the Bermuda Triangle.

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Cricket is no longer a team game

THERE was a time when cricket was a team game, when individual performances were all geared towards the collective good of the team. That era has long gone. But despite that, it’s only occasionally that the degree to which selfishness has come to dominate the game is on naked display.

The fourth day’s play in the first Australia-Pakistan Test provided one of the most crass displays of narcissism that I have ever seen in the game – and I’ve been following it for 42 years.

Much has been made of Shane Watson, an ordinary cricketer, who manages to look good because he comes up against mediocre bowling most of the time. Pakistan, a team which is as moody as the weather in Melbourne, has plenty of talent in its ranks but the players blow hot and cold, the latter most of the time.

Watson has played 14 Tests and is yet to make a hundred. He has come within four runs of the target and missed out. So far he has been unable to handle the pressure that comes from being in the 90s. Hence whenever he approaches the three-figure mark, there is some interest among the commentators to see if he will finally make it.

At the end of the third day, Watson was not out on 64. Australia was nicely positioned, 307 ahead with two days to go, and should have been looking for quick runs on the morning of the fourth day to give themselves enough and more time to ensure a win by bowling Pakistan out.

The 400-run target is normally some kind of a psychological point and most teams aim for this before effecting a declaration.

Australia is a bit more wary than most in this regard as both South Africa (414 in 2008-09) and the West Indies (418 in 2003) have chased down 400-plus scores to defeat them. Hence, it was reasonable to expect that Australia would look for about 450 just to be on the safe side – even if Pakistan had been dismissed for 258 in their first innings.

But they had not contended with Watson.

The entire morning session was wasted by the Queenslander. He added 34 runs to his overnight score in two hours. The others added another 47. Eighty-one runs were scored in 120 minutes on a good wicket – just the kind of thing which will attract more people to watch the game.

Watson spent nearly an hour going from 90 to 98. At lunch he was 98 not out. All the confidence he displayed on the third day – when a good many others, all more talented than him, got out – seemed to have disappeared. Which tells me one thing – he isn’t good enough to handle the pressure at this level.

The fact that the team needed a big lead – and Ricky Ponting would, no doubt, have given Watson an indication of when a declaration would come – was irrelevant. Watson scored at the rate of a snail, displaying a degree of nervousness that would have been worthy of someone making his debut in Test cricket.

The team’s needs were unimportant. His obsession with getting a century consumed him and everything else was secondary.

This is a man who has been playing international cricket for the last seven years. He has tried every trick in the game to try and project himself as being worthy of gracing the international stage. To me he looks like another Matthew Hayden, a pretender, who finds that the times suit him.

There are plenty of better openers in Australia: Phillip Hughes, Phil Jacques and Chris Rogers, to name just three. Perhaps Watson should announce his retirement soon so that more team-minded players can enter the ranks and serve Australia’s needs.

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Shane Watson knows no shame

HIS captain is embarrassed. Senior cricket writers have poured scorn on him. Past cricketers have called his actions juvenile. Yet Shane Watson, the Australian all-rounder, is out there trying to defend his behaviour on the fourth day of the third Test against the West Indies.

Watson dismissed the West Indies captain, Chris Gayle, and then charged down the wicket to the departing Gayle and jumped up and down in front of him, snarling in a manner that the best wolfhound would find difficult to emulate.

And he justifies this behaviour by saying that Gayle had riled him up on the field, and “given as good as he got.” He even says he’s not embarrassed by the monkey act he performed in front of Gayle.

Which leaves one wondering whether he is really in the here and now, whether he knows that he can’t act like a two-year-old on the field – which is his workplace – and whether he thinks that he is not subject to society’s expected standards of behaviour.

Cricket Australia is partly to blame because it has not seen fit to levy any penalty on Watson after the ICC referee Chris Broad fined him a totally inadequate 15 percent of his match fee.

Broad has form in this regard – it would have been interesting to see what he would have fined a West Indies player who did a Watson. In the same game, Sulieman Benn was involved in an incident with Brad Haddin and Mitchell Johnson for which he earned a two-match suspension; the Australians were fined 25 and 15 percent of their match fees respectively.

You know that the chief of Cricket Australia is holding a post he is clearly not fit to hold when he says that the players should be given credit for good behaviour in several recent series.

I’m not sure why anyone should be given credit for doing the basics of their job but that seems to be part of the culture in the country. Cricketers are paid extremely high wages – Australian cricketers are about the highest paid in the world – in order to do a job. With that job comes an expected standard of behaviour; the ICC has a code of conduct and the Australian authority has one too.

When people do a job for which they have been paid, and paid mighty well too, why do they need to be praised? They have signed up to do something and merely kept to it. If a man signs up to work from 9am to 5pm, should he then expect praise because he arrives punctually for work every day?

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Umpires can kill a damn good game

THE final Test in the Australia-West Indies series looked like going down to the wire. But it was stopped a couple of metres short by incompetent umpiring.

The West Indies had one wicket left and needed 51 runs on the final morning; they looked like getting real close until Kemar Roach was given out by umpire Billy Bowden of New Zealand, caught behind.

Roach challenged the decision and the replays showed plenty of air between the edge of his bat and the ball as it passed on the way to keeper Brad Haddin. The technology known as Hot Spot, another tool being used by the TV match officials, also showed that the ball had not made contact with Roach’s bat.

Yet Asad Rauf, the TV umpire, informed Bowden that the decision was up to him. As Bowden was not going to overrule himself, he raised his finger again and the match was over. The West Indies had made 14 runs off 21 balls on the final morning when Bowden intervened.

This incident raises the question: when an umpiring decision goes to referral, what is the third umpire trying to do – find proof that the decision is wrong or find proof that the umpire is right? Shortly before Bowden’s intervention, Rauf ruled that a catch claimed in the outfield by Doug Bollinger was not valid as the ball had hit the ground before Bollinger had got it in his grasp.

Rauf, it may be recalled, had given Shivnarine Chanderpaul out on referral in the second Test when an appeal for a catch behind was turned down by umpire Mark Benson. Ricky Ponting opted for a referral and Rauf overruled his colleague’s decision, even though the replays were inconclusive.

Bowden is a showman who always seems to be trying to get the camera to focus on him. He has an expansive way of signalling a boundary, a peculiar way of signalling a six and generally acts the goat on the field. The way he gave Roach out raises questions about his competence when it comes to actual umpiring – he will probably win an Oscar for his gestures.

And as to Rauf, one wonders how he alone can see something which nobody else can spot. Roach clearly had not touched the ball based on the TV camera evidence. Does Rauf think Bowden has some kind of third eye like a Hindu deity? Rauf saw evidence in the Chanderpaul incident too, when even the umpire on the field could not see a thing.

The referral system is a good thing. But if it turns out to be a case of taking potluck, then it will be of no use.

Technology can aid a good umpire to make good decisions. But in the hands of an incompetent, even the best technology is of little use. That is the only conclusion one can draw. As the old Indian saying goes, it is dangerous to put a matchbox in the hands of a monkey.

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To understand the term ‘the ugly Australian’ you need to watch cricket

THE ugly Australian. That’s a term which is pretty common in the cricketing world, simply because one sees a great deal of evidence on the field. Yesterday, there was one more instance of the kind of boorish behaviour that serves to make every decent citizen of this country wince in shame.

Australia does not know how to lose gracefully in sport. Generally, if an Australian team loses, it is because they played badly, not because the opposition played better. And when this explanation is being trotted out, there will be also be a string of excuses offered, reasons as to why Australia could not win.

In cricket, Australia has got pretty used to winning, by fair means or foul. Since they dethroned the West Indies in 1995, Australia has been the leading team in both Test and one-day cricket, even though their record has not been anything like the West Indies during the 15 years that the Caribbean team was the top Test team.

Recently, Australia was toppled from its spot atop the Test cricket ladder and is now ranked third. This is, in part, due to changes in the team, changes brought about by retirements, injuries (there are lots of injuries due to the incessant cricket that is played worldwide) and politics.

But the behaviour of the Australian team is still appalling. One instance – and there were plenty of others, mind you – from the fourth day’s play in the third Test against the West Indies will suffice to illustrate this.

Chris Gayle, the captain of the West Indies, is a laidback person. He doesn’t lose his temper, keeps silent most of the time he is on the field, but can be a dangerously destructive batsman once he gets going.

When the West Indies began the improbable task of trying to score 359 in their second innings to defeat Australia, Gayle’s wicket was a vital one. More so, since he had made a rapid 102 in the first innings. In the previous Test he had shown an entirely unknown facet of his batsmanship by carrying his bat for 165, a long, slow and patient innings which helped the team to draw the game.

For a while, it looked as though Gayle and makeshift opener Travis Dowlin would put on a sizeable opening stand, until the latter fell to an injudicious stroke. This brought in Ramnaresh Sarwan, the other seasoned player in the side. Sarwan made a hundred when the West Indies chased down 418 in 2003 to defeat Australia; this, incidentally, is the highest fourth innings winning score in Test cricket.

Hence, both the wickets of both Gayle and Sarwan were vital for Australia to feel confident about winning. One more factor has been haunting Australia: the last time they played a Test in Perth, it was against South Africa – and the Proteas chased down 414 to beat the home team.

For a while after Dowlin was dismissed it looked as though Gayle was settling down to play a long, patient innings, similar to the one he played in Adelaide. But Shane Watson, one of the players whose abilities are highly over-rated, finally got an inside edge and keeper Brad Haddin grasped the catch.

Watson then ran to Gayle and began to jump up and down in front of him like a monkey. He was screaming out loud as well but Gayle refsued to be drawn into any kind of retaliation. He turned and departed for the pavilion. Watson was calmed down by his teammates.

It was ugly to see a grown man behave in this manner. It would have been surprising to a first-time watcher of the game – but to someone who has been watching for decades, it was just one more indication of the fact that the moniker “ugly Australian” is indeed an apt one.

Both umpires then spoke to Watson and he has been reported for this incident. It remains to be seen whether he will get off lightly as his teammates have or whether he will be hit with an appropriate penalty.

There was a constant stream of chatter on the field, right from the time the West Indies’ second innings began. The Australians have no need to talk, most of them are good cricketers and if they play to their skill-level, they can win. But they seem to think that they have to keep abusing people on the field.

This often has the opposite effect; opposition players get sufficiently worked up to play well above their abilities and things go wrong for Australia.

This habit of sledging is an indication of an inferiority complex: secretly, the Australians are always scared of losing. They have grave doubts about their own abilities and hence resort to verbal abuse to try and wear down the opposition.

This is one more reason why Test cricket is slowly dying, this display of boorish behaviour on the field.

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Why is Chris Broad still a match referee?

ON A day when the fifth fastest century in Test cricket was scored, there was a sharp reminder of how the white man still rules what is essentially a colonial game.

The West Indies captain, Chris Gayle, put the Australian attack to the sword in the second half of the second day of the third Test to make 102, with a display of clean hitting that hasn’t been seen since Adam Gilchrist made a 57-ball Test hundred against England in 2006-07 at the same ground.

But it was the ugly clash between players that was the standout incident of the day – more so, considering the type of justice that was meted out.

West Indies off-spinner Sulieman Benn, a feisty character, was bowling when Australian wicket-keeper Brad Haddin angrily remonstrated with him for running into Mitchell Johnson while trying to field on his follow-through.

Haddin had no business getting involved in what was an accidental clash between Benn and Johnson.

But he did, and thereafter things hotted up. Benn fielded the next ball as Haddin stroked it down the pitch and made as if to throw down the wickets at his (Haddin’s) end. Haddin pulled away from the wicket and extended a hand to Benn, inviting him to throw the ball. There was no need to do that unless he wanted to aggravate the situation further.

When the over was bowled, Benn began to make some comments to Haddin who was coming up to mid-pitch to have the normal chat with Johnson that batsmen have between overs.

Johnson brushed Benn’s hand as he came up and this led to Benn pushing him away. Yes, Johnson made the first contact.

It was only at this point that umpire Billy Bowden got involved and asked the players to stay apart.

But, strangely, when match referee Chris Broad adjudicated, Benn was charged with a level two offence and Haddin and Johnson with level one offences.

Broad penalised Benn one Test or two one-day games. Haddin was asked to forfeit 25 percent of his match fee and Johnson will lose 10 percent.

Apparently, those who contest the charge get stiffer penalties; Benn contested the charge while the two Australians did not.

Haddin was the agent provocateur; if he had minded his own business, nothing would have happened. Johnson is old enough to look after himself and has been in the team much longer than Haddin; if he was a junior player and at the start of his career, one can understand Haddin’s involvement.

Yet Benn earned a heavier penalty than the two Australians.

Broad has form in this regard – last year when Australia was in India, Gautam Gambhir and Shane Watson collided on the pitch and Gambhir copped the heavier penalty, a one-match ban. Watson forfeited 10 percent of his match fee.

In the same series, India’s Zaheer Khan was fined for a verbal exchange with Matthew Hayden; the latter was widely known as one of the most foul-mouthed players in his time.

A third incident in the same series: Australian captain Ricky Ponting earned not even a rebuke for continuing to appeal long after the umpire had ruled Virender Sehwag not out on a lbw appeal. But he did not earn even a rebuke from Broad.

It’s interesting to recall that when Broad, a former England opener, was given out in the Sydney bicentennial Test in 1988, he knocked all three stumps out of the ground with his bat in anger and was fined £500, the maximum possible fine at the time

It looks as though the ICC takes every chance it gets to penalise the countries that line up behind India when it comes to voting. India is the powerhouse in the cricketing world and the white members of the ICC just hate this – they long for the days when they were making the decisions. This is their one way of getting back at the coloured nations – appoint a match referee who can get a bit of their own back.