I AM not ashamed to say that I love reading children's books and I suspect I am going to read many more after I return from South Africa. I need to travel, and I am sure a lot of us need to as well, to a world of happiness and innocence, to a world where killer egos have not made their appearance yet, to a world where 'us and them' is an unknown concept. I am not being naive. The cricket world, those that sit in judgment and those that influence public opinion need to shed their cloak of importance, wear the hat of simplicity and walk down the path of good intent. It is not difficult, we choose to make it so. We allow a tiny spark to become a raging fire. We behave like silly adults.
My suspicion is that in the terrible Mike Denness affair, and surely he has forfeited the right to be match referee again, all of us took sides first and then chose what we had to say. In India we picked the old card of bias and race and took it to ridiculous lengths. Discussing the actions of a match referee in parliament would suggest that there aren't too many other things of national importance that need to be debated over. The BCCI has a strong president and though not everyone would always agree with his methods, he has the knowledge and the power to take decisions. It should have stopped there.
And it should have stopped being a concern anywhere other than in India, South Africa and the offices of the International Cricket Council. But suddenly the world found it had a new stick to beat an old enemy with. And so, newspapers in England went berserk over Jagmohan Dalmiya, calling him offensive names and betraying an amazing inability to understand the Indian outrage. And a few people in Australia even used the opportunity to attack Sourav Ganguly. It was bizarre and I think it showed the international media in very poor light.
There is a reason I say that. If people in England and Australia had paused fifteen minutes to try and understand why people in India were letting their passions loose, why sensible, educated and intelligent people were reacting the way they were, they might seen things in a different light. But there is a perception around the world, a very convenient perception, that the Indians are a bumbling and inept people and I have experienced that. It comes from people of very narrow vision and I have seen that as well. As a result, the first impression they allow themselves to be carried away with is that the Indians must be wrong.
We saw that when the Delhi Police broke the Hansie Cronje story and the first reaction of the world media was that there must be something wrong somewhere. As we know there wasn't. It was similar this time and on the many radio programmes I did on the issue, I found that people had occupied a point of view and were looking for reasons to justify it. I thought the world had moved on but this episode convinces me that prejudices are far too deeply ingrained. It will take many more generations to remove those. Sadly.
I don't think India got it completely right either but I was delighted to see a strident voice speaking for India. For too long we have been meek, submissive and accepting and the world realises that aggressive posturing pushes us on the back foot. Certainly that is the way opposition cricket teams work and a lot of cricketers have admitted that. For the first time I heard a bold voice and I must confess I loved it. It told me that at last post-colonial India had woken up to a voice that was brave and aggressive. India came of age in this whole affair and, in a funny way, it is nice to see that the rest of the world did not like it. Now if only we can stop the silly practice of telling our readers what the English and Australian media think over every minor issue, and concentrate on what we think instead, we will take further strides.
That is why I think the ICC must have younger referees, people who do not carry old prejudices with them. I have no doubt at all in my mind that a younger referee, even from England or Australia, would have seen the matter in a completely different, less high-handed manner. It was clear to anybody who was willing to look at the incident patiently and rationally that Denness was terribly wrong over the Sehwag and Pollock appeals; and that he overshot his sentence badly on the Tendulkar issue. But the generation that Denness represents has traditionally made fun of the sub-continent and that is why passing a harsher sentence would not have perturbed him too much. It is important to understand that, and the fact that a younger generation doesn't carry the same colonial baggage.
We need to look at new referees as well; people whose primary objective will be to keep the game going and who will try their best to remain invisible. When a referee starts getting heard and seen, it is a dangerous sign for it means he is trying to draw attention towards himself. The way to get over it is to have men of such stature that they will be able to rise above the need to be in the limelight. Such men exist and they are not difficult to find. I am convinced that this is inevitable for adversity has a way of taking people towards character. Maybe the Denness issue was necessary for otherwise we would not have cleansed ourselves.
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