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Shame on the International Cricket Council for asking the Sri Lanka Cricket Board to pay their legal defence bill. This is a sequel to the 'throwing' incident involving Muttiah Muralitheran, umpire Ross Emerson and skipper Arjuna Ranatunga in Australia early this year during a one-day international against Sri Lanka and Australia in Adelaide.

Sri Lanka has been charged by the ICC for violating a gentleman's agreement and deploying an unacceptable team of lawyers to challenge ICC's code of conduct regulation regarding the above incident.

The ICC has also in a 'highly confidential' document asked Sri Lanka to explain why a 'high-powered legal team was used to challenge the ICC code of conduct'. Now this is very funny.

The ICC code of conduct clearly states in one of its clauses that the aggrieved party has the right to a legal defence if he thinks that an injustice has been done to him. And that is what Ranatunga and the Sri Lanka Cricket Board did.

This fiasco was brought about because the match referee at that time, former South African skipper Peter Van der Merve was going to be the accuser, the judge and the jury, on the incident that took place during that match.

I was covering that tour for the Lake House Group of Newspapers and can say that what took place at that time was just not cricket.

The Cricket Board of that time headed by Thilanga Sumathipala did right in securing the services of lawyers. They did so because there was the possibility of Ranatunga being banned from the game.

So why must the Cricket Board pay the ICC for defending their rights? In fact the Cricket Board must ask for compensation from the ICC for the losses they incurred in retaining lawyers.

In the same breath the ICC is saying that they are drawing up a new code of conduct and that each country must sign in agreement stating that it would abide by ICC rulings. Thus they are admitting that their early code had flaws that required to be put right.

All ICC members must read the new code of conduct carefully before signing on the dotted line.