Statisticians split over the status of 'Test'

mumbai: statisticians are the latest additions to the debate between the board of control for cricket in india (bcci) president jagmohan dalmiya and the international cricket council (icc) about whether the on-going centurion test between india and south africa is official or not. though the icc chief executive officer malcolm speed has made it clear that it's an unofficial test and hence the performances won't get any statistical significance, there are some statisticians who are likely to treat this as an authentic test. one of them is mohandas menon, who also works for the board of control for cricket in india's (bcci). menon told this paper from south africa: ''despite what the icc says, we will be treating this as an official one. if you recall in 1993, the icc had decided to treat all the rebel tours to south africa in the 1980s as non first-class and then two years later they decided to treat all the rain-interrupted one-dayers as void (i.e. they are not to be counted as an official matches). but statisticians all over just ignored both these decisions and went ahead to include these matches. till today, the icc has never come back to us. which means they are not concerned. ''so, i am sure this will what happen to this match also. even the icc will give it a test status at a later stage.'' however, bill frindall, considered the last word in cricketing facts and figures, has told the icc that he would treat this as an unofficial test. he wrote: ''i am relieved and delighted to read the icc's firm response to the outrageous decisions taken in south africa. any match staged as a 'test' near pretoria over the next five days will certainly not be regarded by me in any publication or broadcast as a test match. i also feel that the match referee took the correct course of action in response to the on-field behaviour of the indian players.'' if the consensus is not reached among statisticians on this issue, the stats followers could be in for a major confusion.