Former ICC match referee and England cricketer Chris Broad accused the global cricket body of leniency towards India in an interview with The Telegraph published on Monday.
Broad, father of former English cricketer Stuart Broad, worked as a match referee from 2003 to 2024, overseeing several India games.
In a wide-ranging interview, Broad was of the opinion that “India got all the money and have now taken over the ICC so in many ways.
“I’m pleased I’m not around because it’s a much more political position now than it ever has been,” he said, reflecting on India’s current position of dominance in the ICC.
He described having to be “lenient” with India when they were behind in an over-rate match.
“India were three, four overs down at the end of a game so it constituted a fine. I got a phone call saying, ‘be lenient, find some time because it’s India’. And it’s like, right, OK. So we had to find some time, brought it down below the threshold.
“The very next game, exactly the same thing happened. He [former Indian captain Sourav Ganguly] didn’t listen to any of the hurry-ups and so I phoned and said, ‘what do you want me to do now?’ and I was told ‘just do him’. So there were politics involved, right from the start,” Broad said.
He admitted that nowadays, match officials are “either politically savvy or just keeping the head below the parapet”.
Broad also admitted surprise when the ICC contacted him to be a referee given his own run-ins as a player, including refusing to walk, and knocking his stumps down when dismissed in the Bicentennial Test.
But, as The Telegraph wrote of him, “the ICC noted an individual who could empathise with the pressures players face in the heat of battle”.
In a refereeing career that spanned 20 years, Broad admitted that he dodged a lot of bullets — “both politically and physically” — the latter alluding to the militant attack he was caught up in when the Sri Lankan cricket team were shot at in Lahore in March 2009.
He described himself as “someone who believed in right and wrong”.
“In certain parts of the world it’s a bit like the River Ganges — right and wrong are so far apart and there’s a lot of dirty water in between them that you have to deal with, so I think as someone who comes from a right and wrong perspective, to last 20 years in that politically active environment is a pretty good effort,” he said.
But Broad was not alone when it came to taking an ethical stand.
“I think back to Darrell Hair, who was another one who was a right-and-wrong-type individual, and he was ousted because of his beliefs and that was a big learning thing for me.
“You try to be as honest to yourself as you can be, knowing that politically behind the scenes there are things going on,” he told The Telegraph.
“I think we were supported by Vince van der Bijl (ICC umpires manager) while he was in position because he came from a cricketing background but, once he left, the management became a lot weaker,“ Broad said.
