Victory To India After Concerted Power Play

Newcastle Herald

Wednesday January 30, 2008

By CHLOE SALTAU The Age

CRICKET Australia clashed with its players before convincing them to drop the racial element of their charge against Harbhajan Singh, and yesterday caved into a classic display of brinkmanship by financial superpower India to avoid being sued by broadcast partner ESPN.

The powerful Board of Control for Cricket in India had chartered a plane to take its players home from Australia tomorrow if Harbhajan's three-Test suspension for calling Australia's only black player, Andrew Symonds, a "monkey" during the Sydney Test this month was not overturned at yesterday's appeal hearing in Adelaide's Federal Court.

Australia's cricketers were last night understood to be furious after the International Cricket Council lifted the ban and instead fined the controversial spinner 50 per cent of his match fee. It is understood the Australians expected Harbhajan would be hit with a one-match ban and were last night dismayed to hear that he had avoided any meaningful punishment.

The decision amounted to a straight-sets victory for India, which has now had its way on three counts this summer.

Umpire Steve Bucknor was sacked from his duties and sent home after India complained about his incompetence during the acrimonious SCG Test, Harbhajan's was free to play in the rest of the series when his appeal was delayed despite ICC stipulations that it should take place within seven days, and now he 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 CA's urging, the charge was downgraded from the level three offence covering racial abuse to a level two offence covering obscene language. CA feared India would pull out of the tour, and that broadcaster ESPN, which owns the lucrative contract to beam cricket from Australia into the subcontinent, would sue for $60 million, and that it would take 10 years to recoup those losses.

The downgrading of the charge appears to have saved the tour, scheduled to continue with the Twenty20 international expected to draw a crowd of 90,000 people to the MCG on Friday night and the subsequent triangular one-day series involving India and Sri Lanka.

"If a clean chit is not given to Harbhajan, the Indian board's decision is to call the team home," Indian board vice-president Lalit Modi said before the verdict.

India's limited-over specialists, who had been in Melbourne for two days, were yesterday summoned to join the rest of the squad in Adelaide as a show of solidarity.

Controversial fast bowler Shantha Sreesanth, who clashed with Symonds during last 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 CA nor the Australian Cricketers' Association was willing to comment last night.

"There is a process and an outcome has been delivered, and in the time-honoured tradition of Australian cricket, we dust ourselves off and move on," CA public affairs manager Peter Young said.

Justice John Hansen is expected to reveal his full findings in Melbourne on Friday, when the scene will be set for a highly charged contest between Mahendra Dhoni's India, the Twenty20 world champions, and the aggrieved Australians.

CA, Cricket Victoria and Melbourne Cricket Club officials yesterday held genuine fears that the Twenty20 match, which looms as the biggest day of the summer, would be cancelled, costing millions of dollars in lost revenue. General admission tickets have been sold out for the three-hour slog-fest.

"They still have no presence in Melbourne at the moment and they kept the whole squad in Adelaide. That is enough for there to be level of concern," a senior official said. "That game is a huge revenue driver for us."

The match referee who initially found Harbhajan guilty of racial abuse, Mike Procter, was last night on a plane home to South Africa. He is understood to have pleaded with ICC chief executive Malcolm Speed that the initial case be heard in a legal setting.

The Age

© 2008 Newcastle Herald

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