Cricket is a game that exceeds just mere skilful use of certain playing equipments (bat and ball) to overcome an opponent using the same (similar) set of equipments. Cricket is one of the longest field and team game. The thing that keep 22 players toiling over five days, or one day (or four hours in T20) is something more abstract -- some people call it spirit of cricket. It has a lot to do with the respect for the opponent, respect for the laws of the game, the respect of umpire. Tradition plays a bigger role than in any other sport. It is not just like that it is called a game of Gentlemen.
Now if on instances when players fail to follow the discipline of Cricket, refuse to respect the game, the authority of the umpire, neither they remain 'gentlemen' nor the game they play remains cricket. It might resemble cricket because these not-gentlemen still use bat and ball to do something.
Something very ugly happened in the semi-final match between Freiburg Nomads Cricket Club (FNCC) and Zurich Sri Lankan Cricket Club (ZSLCC) on Sept. 01, 2013 -- umpire was abused and threatened and asked to leave the field. This match not only showed the ugly face of ZSLCC players but it also exposed the incompetence of the Swiss Cricket Association (SCA) to hold the respect of Cricket and enforce discipline on the field. SCA's inability to deal with this issue in a neutral and fair manner only shows that such incidents will continue to happen because SCA implicitly endorses such incidents. Therefore, SCA is completely incompetent and is and will only damage the game of Cricket.
Here is my account of the event before and after the Sept. 1 match. It is very frustrating and depressing to recall the events but it should be done for in future hopefully someone might not repeat.
At the toss
At the toss the neutral umpire Derren Kirby talked to the two captains and explained them his interpretation of the wide rule and LBW decision. For whatever reason he told the two captains that in case of the indiscipline he would award the match against the offending team. That time neither Vijay nor I could understand the significance of the last point.
The first innings
FNCC bowled first. The ball bounced and we took full advantage of that. Until drinks break we dominated as the ZSLCC was struggling with something like 60 on board with four or five wickets down. After drinks we became callous or the batsmen played with more commitment, either ways three partnerships happened and ZSLCC took the score to around 150. It was an imposing total. A couple of dropped catches costed us dearly but also our bowlers got a bit carried away with bowling too full or too short.
Also the leg umpire who was a ZSLCC player refused to give any run outs. We could have complained but this is not FNCC's style of cricket. Overall the innings was uneventful in the view of what happened later.
The second innings
We started our chase cautiously. Both Vijay and Rehan were looking in good touch but Rehan had to return retired hurt in 8th over because of cramps and injury he sustained when a ball hit him on the toe. Raghav and Vijay were looking good and we were near 40 without loss in 10th over. Everything was looking good at this point from the FNCC's viewpoint.
The ugly face of ZSLCC
In 10th over, a ball was judged wide by the neutral umpire, the bowler refused to accept the decision. Very quickly the situation escalated to a level when the umpire was threatened of physical assault, abused, questions were raised over his understanding of cricket. Imagine an English guy was abused for his race. And finally when the umpire asked the main offending player to leave the field, the ZSLCC players asked the umpire to leave the field instead.
All this happened over a wide... imagine what might have happened over an LBW decision.
With such humiliation I completely understand when he refused to continue the match and awarded the match to FNCC. He was right within the set of playing conditions he defined and to which the two captains had agreed.
I do not know the history, but at that time the meaning of the pre-toss agreement between the umpire and the captains had become more apparent.
The immediate aftermath
With this the acting chairman of the SCA, a guy called Jai Singh who was there as a mere spectator emerged as the saviour of Cricket. According to him, we should forget the incident and continue to play and he would umpire.
Why FNCC refused to continue [following is taken from my report to the games committee of the SCA]
Apparently three (not so) wise men of SCA had met and decided that the semifinal should be replayed. And that Jai Singh will let us know of the date and venue of the match as soon as possible. Here is the message from Jai Singh dated 10 Sept. 2013]
---
So the SCA games committee thought that nothing extraordinary happened on Sept. 1, 2013. Only that the umpire they appointed for the game was wrong. They only remembered that the match was abandoned and conveniently forgot why the match was abandoned.
I asked the SCA if they would be willing to pay the travel costs to FNCC because according to our logic it was no fault of ours that the match was abandoned. In fact, from our perspective we should have been the winner. Today (Sept. 20th, 2013) I got a mail from Devesh Mathur (another member of the SCA executive committee).
Firstly SCA does not pay for any costs of the participants. You were asked to finish the match by Jai as the Acting Chairman of the League, it would have saved a lot of problems if you had continued even under protest. You did not agree.
Now according to this message, it was the fault of the FNCC that umpire declared FNCC the winner and the SCA acting chairman disagreed with the umpire and wanted us to resume the match. In fact, Devesh's message further means that SCA is doing a favor to us for letting us play again. What a bunch of morons these sca people!!
On top of this FNCC does not even have the right to protest when someone is blatantly robbing Cricket of its essences. I really wonder what kind of precedence these SCA officials want to set or have set. In my opinion not playing was the only option left for FNCC because by doing anything else we were simply supporting whatever ZSLCC people did to the umpire.
I am not sure if Derren Kirby (the umpire in question) is in the good books of the SCA's so called three wise men otherwise they would have bent any rule to uphold his decision.
Implications:
I am not sure they do or can understand the implications of their decision. They have done practically nothing to stop such ugly incidents from happening. Now imagine a hypothetical scenario in which one of our player refuses to accept Jai Singh's decision in the replay of the semifinal and instead ask him to leave the field and let someone else umpire. Same happens again. What will SCA do? Again abandon the game? Ban the payer? But same can happen second and third and so on... there are enough players. I am not sure the SCA people have the sense and ability to predict how their decision has completely damaged the game the way it is played.
I worried if a Cricket association cannot enforce discipline, ensure that its officials are listened to and respected during the match, how can they preserve and maintain the true nature of cricket and spirit of the game. These lame associations have no moral right to run and control cricket in any form. More than the offending ZSLCC players I will blame SCA for what happened.
I tired hard but no matter what and how you argue these SCA officials have a closed brain and anything logical cannot enter through their ears.
Before the semifinal
Making decisions that serve some non-cricketing interests is not new to the SCA. In the course of the league we saw many rules being bent or interpreted for connivence of some. Here are some examples.
There was a long discussion on the final ranking of teams after the league phase. Rules said that net run-rate will be used to break the tie in case two teams have same points.
'Net run rate is defined as: The run rate shall be decided by the total number of runs scored in all completed League matches, divided by the number of wickets lost. [colors are as in the original document]
I fail to understand how someone could came up with such definition of 'net run rate'. This is a definition of batting average. Who uses batting average of two teams to break the tie in a league? Even if we accept that there is a inherent disparity in this measure because when a team get walk over they do not get any 'batting average'.
But there was no way to make the SCA people think of this unfairness -- afterall it was not our fault that other teams gave us walkover. In any case, we accepted to be at the second spot.
Then came up the issue of location of the semi-final. First set of rules said that semifinals and final will be held in Basel. But during the league phase we were told that the first and second team will get to play their semifinal at their home ground. However, when it came up to play in Freiburg, ZSLCC asked to go back to the older rules. Otherwise they were even willing to offer their ground to the other two teams for the semifinal.
Nobody objected when almost every rule was being bent, be it the start of the match, or number of overs per match, bonus points, neutral umpires or match report or anything else. But when it came of the league rankings or location of the match suddenly everyone had a great desire to go back to the original set of rules just because they were in their favor.
In my understanding the rules were changed and re-changed and interpreted only to the convenience of certain people who are considered more than equal, a set that does not include FNCC. I get the impression that factor unrelated to cricket govern the decision making process.
In summary, my experience with SCA is that the bunch of people who are running the show have no desire to think through the problems and learning from the experiences made over the long history of Cricket.
With such incompetent and spineless administration, the Swiss Cricket Association is like swiss cheese -- full of holes.
We made several very good friends in this season, played against some very good players and witnessed some amazing cricket. Hopefully, this behavior of the few incompetent SCA officials which has made the SCA league a very sour experience will not effect our friendship with various teams and players.
right arm over
Arvind
Now if on instances when players fail to follow the discipline of Cricket, refuse to respect the game, the authority of the umpire, neither they remain 'gentlemen' nor the game they play remains cricket. It might resemble cricket because these not-gentlemen still use bat and ball to do something.
Something very ugly happened in the semi-final match between Freiburg Nomads Cricket Club (FNCC) and Zurich Sri Lankan Cricket Club (ZSLCC) on Sept. 01, 2013 -- umpire was abused and threatened and asked to leave the field. This match not only showed the ugly face of ZSLCC players but it also exposed the incompetence of the Swiss Cricket Association (SCA) to hold the respect of Cricket and enforce discipline on the field. SCA's inability to deal with this issue in a neutral and fair manner only shows that such incidents will continue to happen because SCA implicitly endorses such incidents. Therefore, SCA is completely incompetent and is and will only damage the game of Cricket.
Here is my account of the event before and after the Sept. 1 match. It is very frustrating and depressing to recall the events but it should be done for in future hopefully someone might not repeat.
At the toss
At the toss the neutral umpire Derren Kirby talked to the two captains and explained them his interpretation of the wide rule and LBW decision. For whatever reason he told the two captains that in case of the indiscipline he would award the match against the offending team. That time neither Vijay nor I could understand the significance of the last point.
The first innings
FNCC bowled first. The ball bounced and we took full advantage of that. Until drinks break we dominated as the ZSLCC was struggling with something like 60 on board with four or five wickets down. After drinks we became callous or the batsmen played with more commitment, either ways three partnerships happened and ZSLCC took the score to around 150. It was an imposing total. A couple of dropped catches costed us dearly but also our bowlers got a bit carried away with bowling too full or too short.
Also the leg umpire who was a ZSLCC player refused to give any run outs. We could have complained but this is not FNCC's style of cricket. Overall the innings was uneventful in the view of what happened later.
The second innings
We started our chase cautiously. Both Vijay and Rehan were looking in good touch but Rehan had to return retired hurt in 8th over because of cramps and injury he sustained when a ball hit him on the toe. Raghav and Vijay were looking good and we were near 40 without loss in 10th over. Everything was looking good at this point from the FNCC's viewpoint.
The ugly face of ZSLCC
In 10th over, a ball was judged wide by the neutral umpire, the bowler refused to accept the decision. Very quickly the situation escalated to a level when the umpire was threatened of physical assault, abused, questions were raised over his understanding of cricket. Imagine an English guy was abused for his race. And finally when the umpire asked the main offending player to leave the field, the ZSLCC players asked the umpire to leave the field instead.
All this happened over a wide... imagine what might have happened over an LBW decision.
With such humiliation I completely understand when he refused to continue the match and awarded the match to FNCC. He was right within the set of playing conditions he defined and to which the two captains had agreed.
I do not know the history, but at that time the meaning of the pre-toss agreement between the umpire and the captains had become more apparent.
The immediate aftermath
With this the acting chairman of the SCA, a guy called Jai Singh who was there as a mere spectator emerged as the saviour of Cricket. According to him, we should forget the incident and continue to play and he would umpire.
Why FNCC refused to continue [following is taken from my report to the games committee of the SCA]
- Darren was the only match official (appointed by the SCA) at the semi-final. When Darren, in his capacity of the only match official, declares us winners and leaves the field we have no other option than to accept his decision.
- We could not accept Jay Singh's offer to resume the match with him being umpire, for the following reason:
1. How can you replace an umpire, the only neutral and non-striker's end umpire? Here is what cricket laws say about umpire change [http://www.lords.org/mcc/
2. Jay Singh was not the match official and was present more as a spectator. He did not even stay for the full match. Moreover, if we had listened to him we would have disregarded the official umpire -- set for the match was SCA.
3. One full innings was umpired by Darren and from our previous experience we know that Jay and Darren have different style of umpiring. So there was a little chance that umpiring would have been done with same standards as previously set by Darren.
- At any point in the match FNCC showed no disrespect to anyone, even when there were good reasons. An SCA official declared us winner and we have to take that. Not that we would not have liked to have a clear win but when our opponents are not patient enough, it cant be our fault. It was too early to predict the result but we were in a strong position when the game was terminated. We consider it to be equally important to see that cricket is played with its full dignity and spirit.
- So very importantly by resuming the game from that point onwards we were ignoring the shameful and directly endorsing ZSLCC behavior. That would have been perhaps even more shameful. FNCC does not endorse what ZSLCC players did on the field on Sunday Sept. 1, 2013.
The aftermath: An illustration of the incompetence of SCA
Somehow our approach based on principals could not be understood by the SCA and ZSLCC took the issue to the games committee of the SCA.
FNCC sent their report. The umpire sent his report. Both these reports were sent to all relevant people. But ZSLCC apparently sent their report to the SCA committee only and nobody else got to see that. When asked Jai Singh refused to show it to FNCC saying that this was confidential. I wonder what they (sca and zslcc) had to hide.Somehow our approach based on principals could not be understood by the SCA and ZSLCC took the issue to the games committee of the SCA.
Apparently three (not so) wise men of SCA had met and decided that the semifinal should be replayed. And that Jai Singh will let us know of the date and venue of the match as soon as possible. Here is the message from Jai Singh dated 10 Sept. 2013]
---
following the incident during the Semi finals played between Freiburg Nomads CC and ZSLCC the complaint by the umpire Mr. Darren Kirby was forwarded to the League committee. As you have been already informed the League committee was restructured , Bobby being removed( being a member of the involved club) and Rikin, a recognized umpire, from Eagle CC incorporated.
The league committee was given copies of the Complaint from the umpire, report of ZSLCC and mail from Freiburg CC chairman explaining their view.
The committee has finalized its decision which is as under:
1. The umpire had no authority under the Law to award a game to any side. The so called agreement by Captains with the umpire was illegal.
2. As the match was abandoned it has to be replayed.
3. Bobby of ZSLCC has violated the code of conduct of players by arguing with the umpire. He is Banned from representing his club ZSLCC for 1 Match. This ban applies to all SCA official matches and comes into effect immediately.
I would like to remind all concerned that the decision of the League committee is final and will not be changed.
The match has to be replayed at the earliest possible date. SCA president is making arrangements to find neutral grounds and will inform both clubs of the date and venue.
Kind regards
J.Singh
For League Chairman SCA
--So the SCA games committee thought that nothing extraordinary happened on Sept. 1, 2013. Only that the umpire they appointed for the game was wrong. They only remembered that the match was abandoned and conveniently forgot why the match was abandoned.
I asked the SCA if they would be willing to pay the travel costs to FNCC because according to our logic it was no fault of ours that the match was abandoned. In fact, from our perspective we should have been the winner. Today (Sept. 20th, 2013) I got a mail from Devesh Mathur (another member of the SCA executive committee).
Firstly SCA does not pay for any costs of the participants. You were asked to finish the match by Jai as the Acting Chairman of the League, it would have saved a lot of problems if you had continued even under protest. You did not agree.
Now according to this message, it was the fault of the FNCC that umpire declared FNCC the winner and the SCA acting chairman disagreed with the umpire and wanted us to resume the match. In fact, Devesh's message further means that SCA is doing a favor to us for letting us play again. What a bunch of morons these sca people!!
On top of this FNCC does not even have the right to protest when someone is blatantly robbing Cricket of its essences. I really wonder what kind of precedence these SCA officials want to set or have set. In my opinion not playing was the only option left for FNCC because by doing anything else we were simply supporting whatever ZSLCC people did to the umpire.
I am not sure if Derren Kirby (the umpire in question) is in the good books of the SCA's so called three wise men otherwise they would have bent any rule to uphold his decision.
Implications:
I am not sure they do or can understand the implications of their decision. They have done practically nothing to stop such ugly incidents from happening. Now imagine a hypothetical scenario in which one of our player refuses to accept Jai Singh's decision in the replay of the semifinal and instead ask him to leave the field and let someone else umpire. Same happens again. What will SCA do? Again abandon the game? Ban the payer? But same can happen second and third and so on... there are enough players. I am not sure the SCA people have the sense and ability to predict how their decision has completely damaged the game the way it is played.
I worried if a Cricket association cannot enforce discipline, ensure that its officials are listened to and respected during the match, how can they preserve and maintain the true nature of cricket and spirit of the game. These lame associations have no moral right to run and control cricket in any form. More than the offending ZSLCC players I will blame SCA for what happened.
I tired hard but no matter what and how you argue these SCA officials have a closed brain and anything logical cannot enter through their ears.
Before the semifinal
Making decisions that serve some non-cricketing interests is not new to the SCA. In the course of the league we saw many rules being bent or interpreted for connivence of some. Here are some examples.
There was a long discussion on the final ranking of teams after the league phase. Rules said that net run-rate will be used to break the tie in case two teams have same points.
'Net run rate is defined as: The run rate shall be decided by the total number of runs scored in all completed League matches, divided by the number of wickets lost. [colors are as in the original document]
I fail to understand how someone could came up with such definition of 'net run rate'. This is a definition of batting average. Who uses batting average of two teams to break the tie in a league? Even if we accept that there is a inherent disparity in this measure because when a team get walk over they do not get any 'batting average'.
But there was no way to make the SCA people think of this unfairness -- afterall it was not our fault that other teams gave us walkover. In any case, we accepted to be at the second spot.
Then came up the issue of location of the semi-final. First set of rules said that semifinals and final will be held in Basel. But during the league phase we were told that the first and second team will get to play their semifinal at their home ground. However, when it came up to play in Freiburg, ZSLCC asked to go back to the older rules. Otherwise they were even willing to offer their ground to the other two teams for the semifinal.
Nobody objected when almost every rule was being bent, be it the start of the match, or number of overs per match, bonus points, neutral umpires or match report or anything else. But when it came of the league rankings or location of the match suddenly everyone had a great desire to go back to the original set of rules just because they were in their favor.
In my understanding the rules were changed and re-changed and interpreted only to the convenience of certain people who are considered more than equal, a set that does not include FNCC. I get the impression that factor unrelated to cricket govern the decision making process.
In summary, my experience with SCA is that the bunch of people who are running the show have no desire to think through the problems and learning from the experiences made over the long history of Cricket.
With such incompetent and spineless administration, the Swiss Cricket Association is like swiss cheese -- full of holes.
We made several very good friends in this season, played against some very good players and witnessed some amazing cricket. Hopefully, this behavior of the few incompetent SCA officials which has made the SCA league a very sour experience will not effect our friendship with various teams and players.
right arm over
Arvind
Excellent post Arvi...
ReplyDeleteI was very saddened to read this post. It is something that we (the Swiss Cricket Association) have been working on tirelessly for many years.
DeleteThe outfit you refer to as the Swiss Cricket Association are in fact the Schweizerischer Cricket Verband. There was a well documented split in Swiss Cricket in 2009. I welcome you to contact us via our website http://www.swisscricket.ch and perhaps you'll experience a rather more professional side to cricket in Switzerland, a proper league, a real T20 competition and above all an umpiring association.
Vijay, still waiting to hear from you! Alex
ReplyDeleteHi Alex,
DeleteI have mailed you. Sorry for this late reply.
Regards
Vijay
I think you really should differ and declare what association is meaned here or this article is missleading. You mean the spin-off (who claims to be "official") of the official SCA who is incompetent - not the bigger, original SCA. Look up the original SCA under swisscricket.ch.
ReplyDeleteYou can declare whatever you like, we live in a free world, but please do not make this blog as yet another fighting ground for your local conflicts. I have mentioned my experience with one of the two swiss cricket leagues. And it was a very bad experience. If you are the one you belonged to the league run by Basel team then try and reflect on that. Maybe you people should focus on Cricket instead of fighting on some small issues of who heads the league...
ReplyDelete