the fast bowling of Dennis Lillee and Jeff Thomson in the Ashes series in Australia in 1974-5. Denness dropped himself from the England team for the 4th Test at Sydney after scoring only 65 runs in 6 innings (6, 26, 2, 20, 8, 2) in the first three Tests, although he was selected again for the 5th Test in Adelaide after his replacement John Edrich was injured, and achieving his highest Test score of 188 at Melbourne in the 6th Test to win by an innings. The victory was little consolation, as Australia had already won four of the six matches in the series. While in Australia, Denness received an envelope that had been sent with the address "Mike Denness, cricketer". The letter inside read, "Should this reach you, the post office clearly thinks more of your ability than I do." He scored another large Test century, 181, when the tour continued to New Zealand, and captained England in the 1975 Cricket World Cup, losing to Australia in the semi-final. He stepped down from the captaincy after losing the 1st Test of the 1975 Ashes series against Australia, at Edgbaston, by an innings (he had been dismissed for 3 and 8). He was replaced by Tony Greig and never played for England again. Denness scored 1,667 runs in his 28 Tests, including four centuries. His seven accompanying half-centuries helped to leave him with a Test batting average of 39.69. His ODI career was less successful, playing only 12 matches and scoring 264 runs at an average of 29.33, with a best of 66. Match referee Denness was appointed as an ICC match referee in 1996. He caused controversy after the Port Elizabeth Test between South Africa and the visiting Indians in 2001-2 when he sanctioned six Indian players, four including Virender Sehwag and Harbhajan Singh for excessive appealing, Sachin Tendulkar for alleged ball-tampering, and the captain Sourav Ganguly for failing to control his players. At first, India refused to accept the sanctions and named the players for the following Test match. The International Cricket Council responded by stripping the game of Test match status. Soon after, both the BCCI and ICC decided to establish a referee committee to verify Denness's conclusions. The match referee was heavily criticised for failing to explain his actions at a press conference, thus infuriating the Indian cricket establishment. The BCCI later decided to forget the