‘Lack of evidence to pronounce Anderson guilty’

LONDON: Gordon Lewis, the ICC judicial commissioner who heard the misconduct charges against James Anderson, said the England pacer was deemed not guilty as there wasn’t enough evidence to impose sanctions.

Gordon said he found the witnesses to be extremely biased in favour of their own team, and the only neutral witness — a Trent Bridge steward — said he didn’t see much.

Moreover, there was neither an audio evidence to establish the abusive sledging nor video footage of the alleged pushing incident.

Gordon said due to lack of evidence he had to rely on his thought process to arrive at the decision. “I considered the different standards of proof pertaining to charges at different levels under the Code, and with a level 3 charge the penalty could be four to eight suspension points or 2 to 4 Test matches,” Gordon was a quoted as saying by ‘ESPNcricinfo’.

“As I reflected on the evidence, I turned my mind to a possible downgrading of the charge to level 1. In short I do not know on the evidence, and to the relevant standard of proof, what happened in the corridor leading to the stairway in those few seconds after the batsmen and fielding side came in for lunch,” Gordon stated.

ICC CEO Dave Richardson will have time till Saturday to decide if he wants to file an appeal. If he does, a three-member ICC appeals panel will investigate the matter from scratch. A top BCCI official told HT that they will wait how ICC deals with it.