Gavaskar accuses referees for being biased against Asians

New Delhi, Oct 22 (UNI) Former India captain Sunil Gavaskar has once again accused International Cricket Council (ICC) match referees of being biased against Asian players after pacer Zaheer Khan was found guilty for breaching the code of conduct.

After the second Test at Mohali yesterday, Zaheer Khan was fined 80 per cent of his match fee by match referee Chris Broad after he was foung guilty of a level two charge.

The left-arm pacer, who rattled the Australians on the last day of the second Test by claiming three wickets in just four deliveries, appeared to have said something to opener Matthew Hayden after the batsman was dismissed just before the tea on the fourth day.

''If he swore at him, if he abused him, he obviously deserves to get punished,'' Gavaskar told CNN-IBN today.

''But let's not mince words here. Every time, it is always an Indian or a sub-continent player who gets hauled up, never the Australians.

''There were a lot of incidents in the match. If you remember Virender Sehwag batting in the second innings was given not out where everybody appealed and Ricky Ponting came from extra cover towards the umpire and kept on asking again? ''Now if that had been an Indian, the match referee would have taken him to task and could have even fined him. This is where I think the ICC needs to actually get its act together,'' Gavaskar said.

It has not been for the first time that Gavaskar has slammed the rulings of the ICC match referees as in January this year, he claimed Mike Procter was biased against Indian players because of their skin colour, after the South African found spinner Harbhajan Singh guilty of racially abusing Andrew Symonds in the Sydney Test.

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