“If Mike Denness cannot answer questions, why is he here?”: Ravi Shastri once openly lashed out on Mike Denness for penalizing 6 Indian cricketers including Sachin Tendulkar in controversial 2001 Test vs SA

The Indian cricket team has been through a lot of controversies in the past and one such controversy happened in the 2001 Test against South Africa in Port Elizabeth. Mike Denness was the match referee in that match, and he was under the radar for all the wrong reasons.

This was the 2nd test of the series, and it ended in a draw, but what happened during the match raised a lot of eyebrows. Denness penalized six different Indian players for different reasons. Virender Sehwag was banned from one Test, whereas Harbhajan Singh, Shiv Sunder Das and Deep Dasgupta got one match suspended ban due to excessive appealing.

Indian captain Sourav Ganguly was suspended from one test and two ODIs for his inability to control his team’s attitude on the field. However, the one test ban to Sachin Tendulkar over ‘ball-tampering’ was the most talked about affair of the match. Tendulkar opted to bowl seam bowling on day three of the match, and he was getting a lot of help.

Denness asked for the visuals of Tendulkar and informed the Indian team that Sachin won’t be able to bowl in the match. Tendulkar was rightly banned as per Law 42.3 (b), but not for ball tampering. As per Law 42.3 (b), Sachin was penalized for cleaning the seam without informing the umpires. It was seen as a ‘racial’ issue.

Ravi Shastri lashed out on Mike Denness for Sachin Tendulkar ball-tampering incident

After the match, Denness was a part of the press conference where Indian journalists asked a lot of questions from him, but he was unable to answer them. Ravi Shastri, who was doing commentary in the series, was also a part of it, and he lashed out at Denness for not answering the questions. “If Mike Denness cannot answer questions, why is he here? We know what he looks like,” Ravi Shastri said.

The event was discussed in the Indian parliament and the effigies of Denness were burnt on the Indian streets as well. BCCI gave a written application to ICC to remove Denness as match referee, for the next match but ICC refused the same. India and South Africa however agreed to play the last match without Denness, but ICC called it an ‘unofficial’ test.

After the incident, Denness served as match referee for just three more tests and two ODIs. Denness was a former English cricketer who represented England in 28 tests and 12 ODIs. He had a great First Class record where he smashed over 25,000 runs.