New Delhi: Virender Sehwag has been fined 20 per cent of his match fee by the International Cricket Council (ICC) for excessive appealing during drawn first Test against West Indies.
The charge was brought by umpires Asad Rauf, Simon Taufel and Billy Doctrove and Sehwag pleaded guilty to ICC match referee Jeff Crowe in a hearing on Tuesday.
The incident happened when Sehwag got the wicket of Dwayne Bravo just after tea and ran down the wicket to join his team mates for the celebration instead of turning towards the umpire and appealing.
No doubt, Sehwag's action violated the code of conduct and the ruling cannot be disputed. But it smacks of double standards as just a day before the match referee did not take any action against West Indian skipper Brian Lara .
Lara got away scot-free for his gamesmanship on the fourth day of the match on Monday.
On that day, Indian wicket-keeper Mahendra Singh Dhoni was in great form and he went on to smash the ball out of the ground on a regular basis.
The Windies were feeling the heat had no idea how to stop the Jharkhand batsman from running away with the game and glory.
The controversy was triggered off when Dhoni, after hitting three sixes in a row off Dave Mohammed, holed out the fourth to Darren Ganga on the boundary line.
Asad Rauf, unsure if Ganga had stepped on the boundary ropes, called for third umpire Billy Doctrove.
Doctrove was unable to reach a decision because of inconclusive replays -- the cameras had the fielder catching the ball but did not cover his legs.
But Lara was convinced that Ganga had caught the ball cleanly and was adamant that Dhoni be given out.
He approached the umpires and argued with them to take his fielder's word and as if that was not enough, he entered into a heated argument with Dhoni.
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He also snatched the ball from umpire Asad Rauf's hand.
The argument was finally resolved when Indian captain Rahul Dravid declared the innings from the pavilion, clearly expressing his displeasure.
Dhoni eventually accepted the word of the fielder, and was declared out.
But all this was not enough for the ICC to take any action against one of the greatest batsman.
Lara was also unrepentant for his gamesmanship and, ironically, went on to say that he wanted to uphold the "spirit of the game".
"There were 24 big men at the ground and they could not come to a decision. I thought the spirit of the game was not being kept. We all make mistakes but at the end of the day we all want to uphold the spirit of the game," he said after the end of the Test.
He justified his suggestion to Dhoni to walk off by stating that if the umpires are not able to reach at a decision, the players should be able to resolve the matter.
But the double standards adopted by ICC regarding the issue involving Sehwag and Lara shows that cricket world body clearly goes by the reputation of the players while handing out punishments.
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