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CALCUTTA, Nov 20 (AFP) - India's cricket authorities on Tuesday called for match referee Mike Denness to stand down from the third cricket Test against South Africa following his decision to fine and suspend six Indian stars.

"Indian board secretary Niranjan Shah met ICC (International Cricket Council) chief executive Malcolm Speed, who is in Bombay, this morning and demanded that Mike Denness be replaced for the third Test starting at Johannesburg on Saturday," Indian cricket chief Jagmohan Dalmiya said.

He said Speed had assured him that he would speak to ICC president Malcolm Gray and respond on Wednesday.

"The Indian board will await the ICC's response and then decide on its future course of action," Dalmiya said.

Dalmiya said the Indian board would accept any ICC panel referee from South Africa officiating in the third and final Test of the series, as long as it was not Denness.

The suspension and fines imposed on the six Indians by Denness, a former English cricketer, for incidents during the second Test has caused angry protests in India.

Batting superstar Sachin Tendulkar was fined 75 percent of his match fees and given a one-match suspended ban "interfering with the match ball, thus changing its condition."

Virender Sehwag was fined and banned from playing the third Test at Centurion Park for "showing dissent, intimidating the umpire by excessive appealing and using abusive language on the field."

Three players, Shiv Das, Harbhajan Singh and wicket-keeper Deep Dasgupta were also fined and given suspended one-match bans for excessive appealing.

Skipper Sourav Ganguly also received a suspended sentence for failing to control his players on the field.

The verdicts against Tendulkar, a demi-god in cricket-mad India, and the others horrified the media and officials alike.

"The decisions of the match-referee can be best described as being inconsistent, targeted against only one participating team," Dalmiya said in a statement.

"Such decisions by the ICC referee have not inspired any confidence in the team that they would get fair treatment from him in future.

"In fact, all the team members were extremely disturbed and, at one stage, wanted to pull out of the remaining part of the second Test."

Dalmiya said he had persuaded the team to play out the match.

"The reason was that a pull-out from the ongoing Test would have been unfair to the cricket lovers of South Africa and the United Cricket Board of South Africa," he said. 

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