Tags:
Journalism of Courage
Clive Lloyd was a great left-handed batsman who brought a lot of glory to his country and the game. He’s been a match referee ever since that post was created by the ICC. But I see in him a bias against Indians.
Where was the necessity for him to make public his recent discovery of marginally negligible broader bats used by Saurav and Sehwag? What he could have done, to avoid another controversy, was to go to Saurav and ask him to have the excessive width scraped off to bring it to the permissible size. I’m sure neither player was aware of the infringement.
Such bats have their advantages but also their drawbacks. On the plus side, one can middle the ball easier if the technique and footwork are correct. But there are also greater chances of edging the ball, which is what is happening to these two batsmen at present.
This is not the first time Lloyd has acted against the interests of the Indian team. In the early 1990s, I was the manager of the Indian team on the first tour — a goodwill tour — of South Africa after their apartheid policy was scrapped.
Naturally, being a goodwill tour, everybody was excessively polite and friendly — except on the ground. The home team had a player called Peter Kirsten — brotjer of gary — who would invariably back up almost halfway down the pitch before the ball was delivered. Our bowlers had warned him several times, on my instruction, but to no avail.
Now we were 3-0 down in the ODI series after losing the Test series so, Mumbaikar that I am, I thought enough was enough. I ordered the bowlers to run Kirsten out. Kapil obliged, though reluctantly. After the incident, we were shocked to see Kapil getting hit on the knee on his follow-through by their captain Kepler Wessels, while running between the wickets.
Everyone in the dressing room and the crowd was stunned. It appeared to be an an act of revenge for running Kirsten out despite all the warnings in the world. We had no choice but to take the matter to Lloyd, the match referee. However, he declined to take action saying that TV replays did not present sufficient evidence for him to reach a conclusion.
