The Indian cricket tour was in crisis last night after the team suspended its scheduled departure for Canberra over controversial spinner Harbhajan Singh’s conviction for racially sledging Australia’s Andrew Symonds in the controversy-marred second Test.
With fears mounting that the tour could be in jeopardy, Cricket Australia chairman Creagh O’Connor was last night desperately trying to contact Board of Control for Cricket in India boss Sharad Pawar in New Delhi in a bid to organise talks to ensure the tour continues.
Harbhajan was found guilty of calling Symonds a monkey in a code-of-conduct hearing early yesterday morning and was suspended for three Tests.
The decision incensed the Indian team, which held a closed-door meeting at which several players were understood to have argued that the Perth and Adelaide Tests should be abandoned.
No members of management or coaches were invited to the meeting.
The Indian players called the BCCI, demanding it support them in an appeal over the conviction and refused to leave the hotel until they heard back from India.
The team waited while the BCCI called an emergency meeting in New Delhi but had to fly one board member in from Mumbai.
The Indian players initially boarded the bus for the trip to Canberra, where they are due to play a tour match on Thursday, and remained aboard for two hours. After a secondary meeting, they decided it would be pointless to travel before hearing word from the BCCI.
The Indians refused to travel, despite having an engagement at the Bradman museum in Bowral yesterday.
By late afternoon, they resolved to stay in Sydney and will reconsider travelling in the morning for the tour match against an ACT XI.
There is doubt they will play in the remaining Tests unless the conviction against Harbhajan is quashed.
Australia captain Ricky Ponting last night extended an olive branch to the Indians, saying he would talk to their captain Anil Kumble, but he did not seem to comprehend the depth of the Indians’ outrage or pain. As the tour remained in limbo, in India angry cricket fans held street demonstrations and burned effigies of the two umpires who stood in the test, blaming poor decisions for their team’s defeat.
“Indian team, come back home,” chanted dozens of fans in downtown Jammu, the winter capital of Jammu-Kashmir state, as they set fire to effigies of Mark Benson and Steve Bucknor.
The Indian team is furious that Symonds’, Matthew Hayden’s and Michael Clarke’s accounts of the incident were given more weight than those of Harbhajan and Indian master-batsman Sachin Tendulkar.
The players believe umpiring decisions cost them any chance they had of winning the series, and they feel cheated by the Australians over an arrangement between the teams to take the fielders’ word on catches.
An anonymous player told Indian journalists that the Australian team was full of “liars” and “cheats“.
A statement from the Board of Control for Cricket in India backed the Indian players’ version of the “monkey” affair, branding the decision to suspend Harbhajan as “patently unfair” and supporting their sit-in at the hotel.
The BCCI statement expressed “concern” at incidents in the Second Test which could have “a far reaching impact on international cricket”.
“The board will appeal to the International Cricket Council to review the decision of the match referee and suspend its operation till the appeal is disposed of,” the BCCI said.
“The Indian board realises the game of cricket is paramount but so too is the honour of the Indian team and for that matter every Indian.
“To vindicate its position, the board will fight the blatantly false and unfair slur on an Indian player.”
The BCCI later said its statement had been misinterpreted to mean the Indians’ tour was being suspended when it was referring to the appeal process against Harbhajan’s charge.
The BCCI is a billion-dollar force whose revenue gives it major clout in international cricket. It generates the majority of income for the game internationally and Cricket Australia has put decades into nurturing a good relationship with the country’s cricket chiefs.
India is now the centre of world cricket and any spoiling of the relationship with Australia will cost millions in income from the highly popular one day, Twenty20 and Test fixtures the nations share.
The situation puts pressure on the ICC to clear Harbhajan or risk a rift between the best and the richest teams in the world.
Kumble, Tendulkar and Harbhajan had been at the SCG until 2.30am yesterday at a code of conduct hearing over the racist slur.
Gilchrist and Ponting were also at the hearing, along with team management and the two umpires.
Harbhajan denied he used the phrase and was supported by batting partner Tendulkar, however match referee Mike Procter suspended him for three Tests.
“I am satisfied beyond a reasonable doubt that Harbhajan Singh directed that word at Andrew Symonds and also that he meant it to offend on the basis of Symonds’s race or ethnic origin,” Procter said.
Harbhajan allegedly called Symonds a monkey in India last year and the pair had a meeting after the game where the Australian explained he found the term offensive.
The match referees insisted at the start of the tour that the captains of both sides report any racist offences immediately.
Some Indian newspapers have quoted anonymous senior players denouncing the Australian side as “cheats” and “liars”, in regard to two claimed catches and other controversies during the match.
“It’s been a terrible day,” a senior player was quoted in the Hindustan Times as saying. “We have been treated unfairly by the umpires, cheated of a favourable result in the match, are playing a team that cheats and lies quite blatantly, even while pretending to uphold the spirit of the game.”
Other Indian journalists had a similar quote from the senior player who is believed to have spoken after the Code of Conduct hearing.
The ICC refused to comment on the issue last night and said it had not received an appeal from the Indians over Harbhajan’s conviction. The Indians have 24 hours to lodge an appeal which would lead to the suspension of the conviction until another hearing could be held.
By: Pete Truman - 9th January 2008 at 10:41
No matter what the sport.. Australians are full of vitriol and arrogance..i’ve lived in this country long enough to witness it first hand in all types of sport.. the “win at all costs” attitude is even bred into the youngsters playing sport in the playgrounds and at school
Good for them, pity some of it hasn’t rubbed off on the lack of attitude of British sporting teams, but then don’t our schools teach that competition amongst children is wrong.
A few years ago I tried to coach football at our local primary school, they hadn’t won a match for years. Not surprising, the Head had a very ‘enlightened’ attitude to sport, that meant that girls, no matter how crap they were, had to be included in the team, also, when I did get the team on a winning streak, our school kid supporters weren’t allowed to boo and jeer the opposition, they were supposed to provide polite applause.
B#####s.
Now I wasn’t some nutter keen type parent either, I just let the kids get on and develop their own skills without any bullying, it worked, until the system let them down.
Similarly, I tried to coach cricket, a much neglected English school sport.
When the authorities found out that I was taking the kids up to our local pitch and making them face a hard ball, though a smaller, softer kids version, I was forced to hang around the playground and use a load of plastic rubbish, hardly the stuff that fast bowlers are made of is it.
My son had the potential to be a bloody good cricketer, but the school system and even the local team totally let him down.
Then there was swimming, but we won’t go in to that.
I gave up in the end.
Theres always been great rivalry and sledging between England and Australia at cricket, not surprising really, but both teams seemed to have accepted it as par for the course, there have been incidents, ie Lillees aluminium bat, but has that created animosity between them, I think not.
Get a bloody grip and return like for like you bloody monkeys, it’s all part of the modern game, gentlemen and players died out with the First World War.
By: steve rowell - 8th January 2008 at 23:28
No matter what the sport.. Australians are full of vitriol and arrogance..i’ve lived in this country long enough to witness it first hand in all types of sport.. the “win at all costs” attitude is even bred into the youngsters playing sport in the playgrounds and at school
By: Jezza - 8th January 2008 at 09:26
doesnt matter series lost anyway
By: KabirT - 8th January 2008 at 06:55
well news coming in… Bucknor sent back… Harbhajan Singh’s ban lifted while appeal against ban is pending.
By: KabirT - 8th January 2008 at 06:39
I think this was the worst test match i have seen in a bloody long time.
And i am absolutely furious with the kind of umpiring that was delivered during the test. In a total of 10 bad decisions, 8 of them which unfortunately went against India. The Andrew Symonds edge off pacer Sharma and the absolutely horrid decision of LBW against Dravid.
There was also another blunder while not asking the third umpire when the Ganguly catch was taken.
Coming to the “race row”… Australia is to blame for completely blowijng it out of proportion. Andrew Symonds was mocked and called names when Australia toured India last time for an ODI series. Yes, that was pathetic of the Indian crowd and everyone including the Indian team and BCCI condemned the actions of the Indian crowds. However Symonds had vowed to take revenge for that mocking when India tour Australia..and here we are.
Personally i think when a person such as Sachin Tendulkar, putting his intigrity in line is saying that no racist words were exchanged this should have been taken into consdieration when the unnecessery and shocking ban was imposed on Harbhajan Singh.
I think the Australian team’s “win at all costs” attitude will take them down as one of the worst behaved teams in recent cricket history. Ricky Ponting only wanted that 16th straight test win (as impressive as that is) under his belt, at ANY cost.
After the Symonds spat, Anil Kumble alledge during the war of words Australian spinner Brad Hogg called him a “b*****d”. No action what so ever was taken on this.
During the hearing with match referee Mick Procter along with Matty hayden, players like Michael Clarke also testified. How did Michael Clarke hear anything as he was fielding in the cover area. Even the umpires who were much closer to the action did not hear any fowl words personally but bat eared Clarke seemed to have picked up the signals. The only people that should have been taken into account were Matty Hayden who heard the spat and Sachin Tendulkar who was right there. Tendulkar still insists Harbhajan did not racially abuse Symonds but his views were not taken into consideration by Procter. Also there was no hard, concrete and objective evidence..no audio was picked up from the stump mics.
Coming back to the umpiring i think Steve Bucknor should either be sacked or kept away from Indian matches. The man has served the game of cricket very well but i think he has lost his bloody mind.
If Harbhajan’s ban stays India should return back and cancel this tour. Seeing that 70% of all world cricket finances come from the sub-continent ICC now has alot of re-building to do.
Ponting could have controlled all of this.. but one of the greatest players of our times has done a shamefull job of this test match.
Although BCCI will keep in mind before cancelling the tour that alot of ad revenue will be lost. Star TV alone may loose upto Rs. 90 crores (around $22.5 million) and alot of other sponsors will loose alot of money.
But lets see what happens now… a decision will be taken today.
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January 8, 2008 at 12:28 am