November 08 Friday 2002
Unsporting fans tarnish India's cricket image... again

NEW DELHI: Cricket legend Sunil Gavaskar called Thursday for the boycott of unruly venues after unsporting Indian fans disrupted a one-day international against the West Indies. 

Play was stopped for 10 minutes during Wednesday's match in the eastern city of Jamshedpur when the crowd, fearing an Indian defeat, threw bottles on to the field and lit fires in the stands. 

An angry match referee Mike Proctor initially abandoned play and awarded the game to the West Indies before rival players persuaded him to allow the final three overs to be completed. The West Indies went on to win by four wickets as Ramnaresh Sarwan hit a last-ball boundary off Ajit Agarkar to help his team surpass India's challenging 283-6. 

"Crowds that cannot accept an Indian defeat should get no cricket whatsoever," said Gavaskar, who heads the world governing body's cricket committee. 

"The Indian board must seriously start thinking of not only banning venues where there is crowd disturbance, but also heavily fine the staging association for not ensuring proper conduct of the match." Indian cricket chief Jagmohan Dalmiya also condemned the incident, saying the board would have to think hard before allotting 
international matches to disturbance-prone venues. 

"Crowd disturbances at cricket grounds anywhere in the world are condemnable. It is against the spirit of the game," said Dalmiya.

"What happened on Wednesday was no exception. The board will have to think hard before allotting matches to disturbance-prone venues as players' safety and security are pre-requisites for staging international matches."

Ironically, the Bihar Cricket Asociation, which hosted Wednesday's match, is headed by a former police chief of the state, Amitabh Chowdhury.

Proctor said he will report the match to the International Cricket Council (ICC) which said it was committed to safeguarding the safety of the players.

"The ICC and representatives of Boards and the players are working together to ensure that every country has in place effective safety and security plans at all venues," ICC chief executive Malcolm Speed said in a statement from London. 

But will any action be taken? Going by past experience, nothing is likely to happen at least in India, where only two venues, Mohali in the north and Chennai in the south can be considered safe for cricket.

The Eden Gardens in the eastern metropolis of Kolkata has twice in the last eight years seen its reputation as one of cricke's great centres tarnished. The World Cup semi-final in 1996 was abandoned and awarded to Sri Lanka after violence broke out in the stands when India was on the verge of defeat. Four years later, Pakistan won a Test match before empty seats in the 100,000-capacity stadium after police were forced to vacate the stands following crowd trouble.

Yet, the Eden Gardens remains a Test venue at the behest of former ICC chief Dalmiya, who hails from Kolkata and heads both the Indian board and the Cricket Association of Bengal. 

The good news for Proctor was that Wednesday's match was allowed to be completed. The bad news is that there are six more internationals to be played across the country. Three of them will be held in Rajkot, Baroda and Ahmedabad, all in the sensitive western state of Gujarat where hundreds were killed in communal violence earlier this year and where state elections are due next month.

"We are keeping our fingers crossed," admitted a cricket board official who did not want to be named.

But he declined to comment when asked why such potentially dangerous venues continued to be granted international matches.