International Cricket Conference chairman Sir Clyde Walcott, under whose aegis the conference will be held, said in Bombay today that recent instances of stone throwing and invasion of the playing field by crowds have undermined the spirit of the game, and the referees' meeting will try to find some solutions to the problem.
Citing the instance of Calcutta, where match referee Clive Lloyd had to concede the World Cup semifinal to Sri Lanka against India due to crowd violence, and an instance in Bangalore during the just concluded Titan Cup, he said there was a move to blacklist guilty centres from holding international matches.
Other items on the agenda, Walcott said, would be to make the code of conduct for players stricter, and to usher in uniformity in penalties.
Eighteen match referees, two each from the nine Test playing nations, are participating in this first such meeting.
Reviewing the workings of match referees since their introduction in 1991, Walcott said he was satisfied with the result. The meeting, he said, would take note of the achievements and look at further empowering the match referees. ``I find scope for further improvement in refereeing,'' Walcott said here.
ICC secretary Dave Richards said that though the referee's powers would be enhanced, it could not solve the problem of commercialistion of cricket gear. For instance, he pointed out, there are certain firms that at least on paper describe themselves as manufacturers of cricketing gear and thus entitled to have their logos on players' kits, and it was impossible to prove otherwise. South Africa, Richards said, was the only country which protested against non-sports logos on cricket bats.
Referring to the growing protests against tobacco companies sponsoring cricket tournaments, Richards said it would be difficult to curb that at this present point in time as tobacco accounted for fifty per cent of all cricket sponsorship. ``We will need to find alternative sources of sponsorship before taking any steps in this direction,'' Richards said.
The ICC secretary admitted that various international captains had complained about sentences and fines imposed by match referees varying from game to game, even for similar offences. ``We are working at evolving a common system, and bringing consistency to the penalties they impose,'' Richards said.
Referring to the modern practise of putting up huge television screens in stadia whereby the crowd got to see closeups of controversial umpiring decisions or player behaviour that could be incendiary, Richards said there was no solution to that problem. ``It is part of cricket entertainment, and should stay,'' Walcott added.