Outraged by the umpiring in Bangladesh’s World Cup quarterfinal loss to India, the Bangladesh Cricket Board has announced its decision to lodge an official protest with the ICC. The BCB in fact also have the backing of the governing body’s President Mustafa Kamal, who said the on-field officiating was “very poor”.
Kamal, claiming to speak as a fan and not as ICC President, also added that the matter needs to be looked into. “From what I have seen, the umpiring was very poor. There was no quality in the umpiring. It seemed as if they had gone into the match with something in mind. I am speaking as a fan, not as the ICC president,” Kamal said.
“Umpires may make mistakes. The ICC will see if this was done deliberately. Everything is on record. The ICC has to investigate and inquire the issue to see if there’s anything to it.”
- Mustafa Kamal, ICC President
Bangladesh were handed a 109-run thrashing by India in the quarterfinal match on Thursday. The one contentious moment of the game was when centurion Rohit Sharma got a no-ball reprieve. Rohit was batting on the score of 90 in the 40th over when he was caught off a Rubel Hossain delivery, only for the ball to be declared a “no-ball”.
Rohit went onto add another 47 runs in quick time to help India go past 300-run mark. Ian Gould was the umpire who adjudged Rubel’s full-toss as waist high ‘no-ball’ with Rohit being holed out at deep mid-wicket boundary. However, TV replays showed that it was a real touch-and-go situation which could have gone either way.
“I don’t want to say anything about the umpiring decisions. Everybody present saw what happened. So it’s not fair on my part to comment on this.”
- Mashrafe Mortaza, Bangladesh Captain
BCB said it will protest the umpiring in its report to the ICC. “Naturally we will appeal against these decisions in our report. It won’t change the result, unfortunately. One wrong decision can make a huge difference in a World Cup quarter-final,” BCB president Nazmul Hassan was quoted as saying by ‘ESPNCricinfo’.
Meanwhile, the International Cricket Council (ICC) released a statement on their website, fully backing their match officials.
CEO David Richardson said, “The no-ball decision was a 50-50 call. The spirit of the game dictates that the umpire’s decision is final and must be respected. Any suggestion that the match officials had “an agenda” or did anything other than perform to the best of their ability are baseless and are refuted in the strongest possible terms.”
“The ICC has noted Mr Mustafa Kamal’s comments, which are very unfortunate but made in his personal capacity. As an ICC President, he should have been more considerate in his criticism of ICC match officials, whose integrity cannot be questioned,” he added.
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