A case of double standards

From Abdullah Khalid, United Kingdom
The recent admission by Marcus Trescothick that he used minty saliva on the ball to shine to aid it to swing more is another example of the two yardsticks used in cricket. When Wasim and Waqar in '92 demolished England with reverse swing they were labelled as cheats, but when England uses the same reverse swing it becomes an 'art' perfected by the English bowlers.

Similarly, during the 'Oval' fiasco, Darrel Hair was so quick in penalising the Pakistani team for ball tampering that he did not even give it a second thought, and on what evidence...his instincts ! However, here we have someone admitting that he did use something to aid swing, and I hear that it is legitimate. Micheal Kasprowicz went on saying that he wished they had applied more so the ball missed his glove. Huh! Let me be very honest, if this had been admitted by any Pakistani player, the whole series would have been scrapped or worse the scoreline reversed. The only reason this has not been possible is that it has never been proved that Pakistan did it. If it was so, then the current Pakistani fast bowlers would be winning matches as well, which they cannot, because perfecting the art of reverse swing is difficult and it was only the great Khan and the Ws who could do it perfectly.

Double standards have always been the norm for Australia and England. From the '87 incident involving Mike Gatting and Shakoor Rana to Ross Emerson/Darrel Hair and Muralitharan to the Oval fiasco, there have always been double standards applied by these nations. It is time we have one law for all rather than different laws for different countries. We already have seen the split in ICC, the CT and Zimbabwe issues are clear examples of this split. Round 1 (Zimbabwe) was won by the Asian bloc, Round 2 (CT) to the non-Asian bloc. What happens next. We might be hearing Lalit Modi soon saying the IPL Champions League will take place in Delhi, Mumbai, Karachi and Lahore. What will happen then?