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Shame on Cricket Australia
Shame on the ICC
Shame on India
Cricket's day of shame
Chloe Saltau and Alex Brown
January 30, 2008
WORLD cricket authorities have caved in to the game's financial superpower, India, and Cricket Australia has incurred the wrath of its own Test players by pressuring them to drop a racial slur charge against Harbhajan Singh.
The Board of Control for Cricket in India had even chartered a plane to take its players home tomorrow if the Indian player's three-Test suspension - for calling Australia's Andrew Symonds a monkey during the Sydney Test - had not been overturned at yesterday's appeal in the Federal Court in Adelaide.
Cricket Australia was anxious to have the charge dropped because it feared its board would be sued for a figure understood to be about $60 million if India quit the tour. India's broadcast partner, ESPN, owns the lucrative contract to beam cricket from Australia into the subcontinent. If it sued successfully, it could take 10 years to recoup the losses, Cricket Australia told the players.
But the Australian cricketers were understood to be furious last night after the International Cricket Council lifted the ban and instead fined the controversial spinner half his match fee.
It is understood the Australians had expected Harbhajan would be hit with a one-match ban and were last night dismayed to hear he had avoided any meaningful punishment.
One Australian player, who refused to be named, told the Herald last night: "The thing that pisses us off is that it shows how much power India has. The Aussie guys aren't going to make it up. The players are frustrated because this shows how much influence India has, because of the wealth they generate. Money talks."
The decision amounted to a straight-sets victory for India, which had the Jamaican umpire Steve Bucknor sacked and sent home after it complained about his incompetence during the acrimonious SCG Test. And after India threatened to go home, Harbhajan was freed to play in the rest of the series when his appeal was delayed - despite ICC stipulations that it should take place within seven days.
Now Harbhajan has effectively been slapped on the wrist despite three Australian players' insistence that they heard him utter the word monkey for the second time in the teams' recent history.
At Cricket Australia's urging, the charge was downgraded from the level-three offence covering racial abuse to a level-two offence covering obscene language. The move was initially met with fierce resistance by the five Australian players involved in the hearing, all of whom were intent on seeking the maximum punishment for Harbhajan. But all begrudgingly agreed to the downgrade after taking legal advice from Cricket Australia's lawyer Dean Kino.
The decision was made by mutual consent between Cricket Australia and the Indian board.
It appears to have saved the tour, scheduled to continue with the Twenty20 International at the MCG on Friday night, and the triangular one-day series involving Australia, India and Sri Lanka.
"If a clean chit is not given to Harbhajan, the Indian board's decision is to call the team home," the vice-president of the Indian board, Lalit Modi, said before the verdict was reached. During the Adelaide Test the Cricket Australia chairman, Creagh O'Connor, was negotiating behind the scenes with the Indian board member I.S. Bindra.
As pressure mounted on Cricket Australia to lessen its charge, India's limited-over specialists were summoned from Melbourne to Adelaide to join the rest of the squad in a show of solidarity. The fast bowler Shantha Sreesanth, who clashed with Symonds in October's limited-overs tour of India, was among them. "We have just landed in Adelaide. I don't know [why], I haven't been told anything," Sreesanth said.
Neither Cricket Australia nor the Australian Cricketers Association would comment on the outcome of the appeal last night.
The New Zealand judge John Hansen, who presided over yesterday's ICC appeal hearing, is expected to reveal his full findings at a news conference in Melbourne on Friday, when the scene will be set for a highly charged contest between India and Australia.
Cricket Australia, Cricket Victoria and Melbourne Cricket Club officials yesterday feared that the Twenty20 match, which looms as the biggest day of the summer, would be cancelled, resulting in millions of dollars in lost revenue.
Shame on Cricket Australia
Shame on the ICC
Shame on India