The BCCI is repeatedly being criticized by the western press for its appeal against Harbhajan but I strongly believe it isn’t doing enough. The BCCI is an extremely strong organization but it will ultimately acquiesce to the ICC. That’s how it works and the Indian team will have no option but to continue this tour and continue playing in such disgraceful conditions. The BCCI will make noises and try and force the ICC to revoke the Harbhajan suspension but I am not convinced any of it will happen.

Indian cricket getting screwed:

The manner in which the match referee has suspended the Harbhajan Singh without taking into account the fact that he was provoked into making such a statement is frankly absurd. Besides, there is still NO EVIDENCE that Harbhajan made that statement. And why not take the sledge in context of the way the Australians were winding Harbhajan up? If it did happen that is.

Men of honour and true servants of the country like Rahul Dravid and Sachin Tendulkar will continue to maintain silence and play out the rest of the tour. We as fans will forget all of this and move on to the new games and continue to pump cash into the game. And yet, I get the uneasy we are getting screwed by the ICC. Why does Ricky Ponting, a man who has no credibility whatsoever get such a say in things and somebody like Tendulkar doesn’t?

I won’t be shocked if Ricky Ponting, Brett Lee and Adam Gilchrist put on false PR facades over the next 2 months and start to charm us Indians. The money these cricketers stand to make from Indian sponsorship and especially the Indian Premier League is too important for them to worry about national pride. That is going to absolutely make me sick.

The defeat at Sydney:

Yes, the defeat hurts and its adding to the pain leading to increased outrage. Anil Kumble’s decision to sign an off-field pact with Ricky Ponting is frankly laughable, this is like signing something with your spouse that says ,”When either of us cheats on the other we will warn the other party accordingly .” Are you kidding me ? And with Ricky Ponting?!

The team made us proud by fighting through incredibly poor decisions in the first innings. we fought really hard to take the first innings lead. And we could have very well saved the test match if not for unbelievable decisions on the final day. Rahul Dravid and Saurav Ganguly could have well saved the match. And who the hell made Ricky Ponting the umpire? Men like RP Singh and Ishanth Sharma fought so hard after years of toiling playing in front of 20 people and a dog and yet their efforts ended up in a defeat and not an honourable draw.

The sporting world has recently been rocked by a number of incidents involving taunts and intolerance related to faith and race. Most notably, the ‘booing’ and the abuse of Black English footballers by Spanish fans at Madrid during a friendly. Racist chants are very common in both the Spanish and the Italian leagues unfortunately. And Cameroon’s Samuel Etoo (who plays for Barcelona) has been the victim a number of times.

Cricket has largely been free of such incidents (atleast that I know of) barring a few minor incidents mostly involving inebriated Australians.

Unfortunately, news now comes that Australian Dean Jones has been fired by Ten Sports after he called Hashim Amla a ‘terrorist’ on live television.

It turns out Amla took a catch to dismiss Kumara Sangakarra in the on going test match in Colombo and Jones was heard saying “the terrorist has got another wicket” in the background. Ten Sports had no choice but to fire him.

Dean Jones is a former test player who was very well known for his exploits in the one-day form of the game. Of course, Jones is also well known for making 210 in the famous tied-test match at Chennai. He batted through the day and was so dehydrated that he ended up in hospital. Recently ofcourse, he has been a commentator for various sports channels and was briefly in the reckoning for the position of the coach of the Indian Cricket team.
Funnily enough, this is what Dean Jones had to say when journalists caught up with him at the airport:

“Everyone needs to get away from perpetuating the myth, publicly and privately, that beards associated with the Muslim faith are somehow suspicious, and I intend to do exactly that. The irony is that I am great friends with most of the Pakistan team and they are all Muslims.”

Such taunts and insults are largely a very rare occurrence in sport and it should be kept that way. It’s going to take a lot of work on the part of the authorities to keep the black sheep out.

About Hashim Amla:

Hashim Amla is in fact the first South African of Indian descent to play for the national side. Amla captained the South African Under-19 team and in fact made his test debut versus India at Eden Gardens. Despite a very poor start to his international career, the signs are there that he is going to be around for a long time and could very well be the captain of the South African time at some point in the future.

Z