The International Cricket Council (ICC)’s judicial commissioner Gordon Lewis A.M. declared that England’s James Anderson and India’s Ravindra Jadeja were not guilty of breaching the ICC’s Code of Conduct.
Lewis arrived at his decision after a six-hour hearing here on Friday and this has cleared the decks for Anderson’s participation in the fourth Test commencing at his home ground Old Trafford on August 7.
It may be recalled that during the first Test at Trent Bridge, Anderson was alleged to have pushed Jadeja. Consequently India had lodged a Level 3 code violation charge against the England spearhead. In retaliation, England accused Jadeja of advancing aggressively towards Anderson during the same incident and pressed for a Level 2 breach. The ICC match referee David Boon, who adjudicated upon England’s charge, decided that Jadeja was guilty of a Level 1 offence and not Level 2 but it led to an uproar from the Indian team, especially skipper M.S. Dhoni, who went public with his criticism. Later the BCCI also won its right to appeal against the decision delivered upon Jadeja.
Lewis, who heard India’s original charge against Anderson as well as its appeal to reconsider Boon’s verdict on Jadeja, heard the lawyers representing the players, through video-conferencing as he is based in Australia. According to an ICC press release, the witnesses included ‘some Indian and English players’. It is reliably learnt that Dhoni, Jadeja, R. Ashwin, Gautam Gambhir, Anderson, Matt Prior, Ben Stokes and Stuart Broad attended the hearing.
The release stated: “The ECB and Anderson were represented in the hearings by Nick De Marco while Adam Lewis QC represented Jadeja. The hearings were also attended by the two team managers, the ECB’s Paul Downton, the BCCI’s Sundar Raman and M.V. Sridhar, the ICC’s General Manager - Cricket, Geoff Allardice, and the ICC’s Ethics and Regulatory lawyer, Sally Clark.”