The inflexible, immature, insensitive insistence of the International Cricket Council (ICC) not to reconstitute, or even reconsider, the referees' commission has helped Jagmohan Dalmiya generate increasing support - even from people who hitherto disapproved of his tactics. In contrast to the conciliatory approach from Dalmiya, the president of the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI), the ICC's ostrich-like stance is dangerously confrontational. The options that have emanated from Dalmiya's Kolkata HQ to the cardinals in the ICC Vatican have been aimed at finding a solution to the impasse, not fuelling the crisis. But in systematically turning down option after option, ICC has made the issue non-negotiable.

Dalmiya's latest offer to ICC shows him to be a democrat, rather than the muscle-flexing bully that he is usually portrayed as in the media. What he has asked for is that the final make-up of the three-member panel is finalised at ICC's executive board meeting in March - or, alternatively, that a ten-member commission is set up, with a representative from each of the Test-playing nations, to review the affair. Surely a global perspective would be a better bet. Dalmiya has even volunteered to spare the ICC coffers by defraying the expenses of the ten-man panel.

But ICC is paranoid about reconstituting the panel. Presumably it fears that giving in will not only weaken its authority but also leave the door open for more countries to act likewise. That would lead to anarchy. But ICC needs to decide whether the three-member-panel idea is flawed, as the BCCI believes it is.

Dalmiya's logic in asking ICC to exclude representatives from India, South Africa and England (Mike Denness, the referee at the centre of the controversy, is English, or at least Scottish) does have merit, and shouldn't be lightly dismissed. There is little doubt that the confrontation is more ICC v Dalmiya than ICC v BCCI. The entire episode has done little credit to the governing body as an institution that is supposed to nurture the game.

Dalmiya's biggest argument may not be with the composition of the commission itself, but the powers that the panel has been given. The terms of reference specify that the commission can only look into whether Denness followed the procedures laid down in the ICC Code of Conduct in the second South Africa-India Test at Port Elizabeth. The commission can't review the actual disciplinary penalties imposed.

The BCCI may be taking one step at a time. The first is the formation of the commission. The penalties imposed by Denness are likely to be the next item on the agenda. An indication that they are unlikely to be swept under the carpet came when Dalmiya was quoted in The Times of India as saying: "I would not to go into that. The issues to be taken up by the commission have been already put on record in our agreement signed in November."

The issue could yet get more complicated than it already appears.

H Natarajan is senior editor with Wisden.com in India.

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