The importance of being Jagmohan Dalmiya

© CricInfo

Indian cricket's strongman is getting stronger, if the decisions taken at the executive board of the International Cricket Council (ICC) at Cape Town over the weekend are reliable indicators. He has again proved that adopting a tough stance can be profitable. It doesn't always work that way though, and Jagmohan Dalmiya would do well to remember this even as he savours his latest success in international cricket diplomacy.

Whichever way one looks at it, there is little doubt that the president of the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) has gained immensely as a result of the deliberations at the Cape Town meeting. And in the process, Indian cricket too has benefited. Ever since the Mike Denness controversy surfaced in November last year, Dalmiya has managed to drive a hard bargain with the ICC.

Perhaps, only a former ICC president could have pushed the game's governing body on the backfoot so often within the space of a few months. And while this approach has won him few friends in the international cricket fraternity, it has made him a hero of sorts at home. But Dalmiya must also know when to stop the hard bargaining and it is hoped that he will be satisfied with the result of the executive board meeting and now concentrate on the pressing problems confronting Indian cricket.

Dalmiya was expected to test his power at the conclave, where the most controversial item on the agenda was the issue of a referees' commission set up by the ICC to look into the decisions taken by Denness during India's tour of South Africa. Since then, the BCCI and the ICC have been at loggerheads over the controversy. But instead of buckling down, Dalmiya took the ICC head on.

With both parties determined to score a point, at one time a split seemed on the cards, especially after India received backing on the issue from the Asian Cricket Council last month. When South Africa made it clear that they would back India, the ICC, however, had to back down or risk half its members forming a breakaway group.

Matters came to a head with Dalmiya rejecting the ICC appointed referees commission to go into the Denness controversy and subsequent measures to be taken in this regard. He made it clear that India would "refrain from participating in the commission in any form or manner".

He objected to the three-member commission comprising Majid Khan (Pakistan) and Andrew Hilditch (Australia) and former judge Albie Sachs of South Africa. He achieved his objective when the ICC scrapped the appointed commission and put in its place a Disputes Resolution Committee.

The new panel is headed by Michael Beloff, who is to succeed Lord Hugh Griffiths as chairman of the ICC's Code of Conduct commission. The other members are the Zimbabwe Cricket Union chairman Peter Chingoka, the West Indies Cricket Board president Wesley Hall and their Australian counterpart Bob Merriman. The scrapping of the old commission and the appointment of a new one is largely being perceived in cricketing circles as a victory for Dalmiya and why not?

© Reuters

The importance of being Jagmohan Dalmiya was also driven home by the fact that before official business was conducted at Cape Town, ICC president Malcolm Gray met with Dalmiya in a bid to calm ruffled feathers. The diplomatic process had actually started with the visit of Merriman and Hall to Kolkata recently where they met the BCCI president.

The Cape Town meeting also accepted a report prepared by ICC Chief Executive Officer Malcolm Speed, to revise the role of match referees. In future, the onus will be on umpires to lay disciplinary charges, which will then be referred to referees to hold a hearing, a point of view Dalmiya will not hold anything against.

Also, there will be a right of appeal against referees' decisions for more serious disciplinary offences, again a suggestion Dalmiya has advocated. In addition, referees have been given the authority to explain their decisions to the media, something that is currently denied to them under existing regulations. This way, at least the kind of farcical press conferences held by Denness at the height of the controversy will be a thing of the past.

The new committee will review the detailed procedures followed by Denness in disciplining the six Indian players. In addition, a new disciplinary code was agreed upon by the Executive Board, with the aim of achieving greater consistency in the application of cricket discipline. There will now be four levels of code breaches, with recommended minimum and maximum penalties.

According to Speed, the new disciplinary code would be an important tool for the recently convened panels of ICC umpires and referees to work with. While lamenting the declining standards of on-field behaviour and admitting that there has been inconsistency in the way it has been dealt with in the past, Speed was firmly of the view that the new system establishes very clear penalties for misbehaviour, so there can be no misinterpretation by either the players or officials concerned. The new disciplinary code is scheduled for introduction from the beginning of next month.

However, there was apparently little Dalmiya could do to reverse the status of the third Test between India and South Africa at Centurion. The ruling to strip the game of its official status was upheld unanimously, according to a statement issued after the meeting. Speed's decision that South Africa won what became a two-match series by 1-0 was confirmed.

Obviously heaving a sigh of relief, Gray said that while the matter had been a major issue for the ICC and its members over the past five months, "it is a significant achievement that a solution has been reached by all directors that is both businesslike and practical."

One thing is certain. The deliberations at Cape Town succeeded in defusing a potential crisis that at one point looked set to cause a split in the game' governing body. Perhaps one should refrain from being over-optimistic but the hope is that the problem has been solved and cricket can move on ahead.

Former Pakistan captain and ICC referee Asif Iqbal perhaps summed up the scenario best when he said on the eve of the meeting,"Gray and Speed are capable people and have the best interests of the game in mind, while Dalmiya will respect the ICC as the parent body." The Cape Town conclave achieved a lot towards averting a crisis. It is now time for the concerned parties to bury the hatchet, turn their back on ego clashes and concentrate on improving the image of the game which has taken a beating of late.