SYDNEY, Jan 30 - The Indian cricket board (BCCI)
and the International Cricket Council (ICC) have come under
attack from sections of the Australian media after India
spinner Harbhajan Singh was cleared of racially abusing Andrew
Symonds.
Australian newspapers accused the BCCI of using their
financial muscle to hold the world game to ransom while
criticising the ICC for bowing to their demands.
The Sydney Morning Herald's headline read "Cricket's day of
shame" while The Australian proclaimed "Cricket caves in to
India's demands." The Sun-Herald's main headline was "India
gets its way, Harbhajan charge downgraded, ban overturned."
Harbhajan had originally been suspended for three matches
after being found guilty of calling Symonds, Australia's only
black player, a "monkey" during this month's bad-tempered
second test in Sydney.
The Indian cricket board had threatened to cancel the tour
unless the ICC dropped the charges but the crisis was averted
on Tuesday when Harbhajan won an appeal against the original
ruling.
Harbhajan was cleared when the appeal judge agreed to
downgrade the charge to the lesser offence of abusing an
opponent. He pleaded guilty and was fined half his match fee
but the three-match ban was lifted.
The broadsheet Sydney Morning Herald reported that the
Indian cricket board had chartered a plane to take their
players home if the verdict went against Harbhajan while
Cricket Australia persuaded their own players to drop the
charges and agree to a lesser offence.
NO OPTION
The paper said Australia's players were privately seething
about the turn of events but were left with no option because
Cricket Australia feared the prospect of a multimillion dollar
lawsuit if the tour was scrapped.
"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 Sydney Morning
Herald reported.
"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."
Former Somerset captain Peter Roebuck, writing in the same
newspaper, said the Indian cricket board should be condemned
for their abuse of power.
"If this is the way the Indian board intends to conduct its
affairs hereafter, then God help cricket," Roebuck wrote.
"Brinkmanship or not, threatening to take their bat and
ball home in the event of a resented verdict being allowed to
stand was an abomination. It sets a dreadful precedent. What
price justice now?" Peter Lalor, writing in the national
broadsheet The Australian, said the decision was further proof
of India's ability to wield their financial power to win events
off the field.
"India, the team that bleated about the spirit of cricket
after being beaten in Sydney, has again held a gun to the
game's head and had its demands met," Lalor wrote.
(Editing by John O'Brien)