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I hope that the tour is called off, India goes home and they send a team of grownups next time. Honestly, it seems like a bunch of 12 year olds are making their decisions/excuses.

India's decision to "suspend" the tour while it waits for an appeal on the Harbhajan Singh suspension is perhaps the crudest of blackmail I've seen in world sport for a while, and the ICC should let them spit their dummy and walk away rather than give in to such bully-boy tactics.

If the ICC caves in and changes the Harbhajan verdict in the face of Indian threats, the game will cease to have any credibility. For the BCCI to claim that it "abhors racism of any form", but at the same time does not view the "monkey" jibe as racist is quite clearly ridiculous and deserves nothing but contempt. Peter Roebuck is a bloke I normally have plenty of time for, but his article that condemned Ponting, Hayden, Clarke and Gilchrist but sought to justify Harbajan’s “exuberance” was a poor a piece as I have ever read, and appeared to sail very close to setting up different rules for different countries.

In many respects, India’s reaction (sulking and whinging) is a shame, they had got a dud hand on many of the calls, and Symonds should never have publically said that he was out. I got the feeling that most people were sympathetic, but any thinking person can have no sympathy for their carry on over the past day and a bit. It will only drive the nations further apart.
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Comments

Bloggy said…
I think you are mistaken my dear friend. This incident is not actually an aftermath of what happened in Sydney but it rather is a protest from the long neglected sub-continent teams towards the "Cricketorial Colonization".
The so called whites have always been doing this to the third world countries. But nobody before this has treated them for tit for tat. Now when through their sheer efforts Indians are slowly but steadily shifting the center of gravity towards this part of the world be it Economy, Technology, IPR. This is becoming their eye-soar. This is not that cricket is hitting australia but the Indian Rupee gaining more demand than Australian Dollar!!!!
8 January 2008 at 10:14
Kris McCracken said…
Yeah, nothing says "we are a proud mature nation ready to assume our proper place in the world" quite like the hissy fit and attendant illogical justifications for racial abuse that we've seen from the Indian hierarchy in this example.

I’m all for greater global equality, and agree that India is (and should) assume its place as a rising superpower, but the appropriate response to perceived arrogance and domination should perhaps be something other than ill-mannered conceit and intimidation. Sadly it seems to be a global phenomenon, where boorish dictators like Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro are feted as heroes, while they actually act in a far more imperialistic manner than those they rebuke for "bullying imperialism".
8 January 2008 at 11:20
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