And I am not saying Australians are not racist. What I am saying is that there is a huge double standard. Basically, they can get away with anything. Dont like the umpire… change him. Dont like a decision.. get it overturned. These are things Australia does not do.

Also what Hansen did was really stupid and he looked like a moron (quote)Hansen’s findings will be seen as technically correct but that by his efforts to ‘legitimise’ his findings he has served the game – and the cause of diminishing racist commentary in sport – he has done incredibly badly and coincidentally trashed Symonds and the Australian team efforts to combat racism. A sad, bad result. (quote)

i have always been taught that if you have been bullied or in this case with harbajan when symonds provoked him not to say something back to them but to either ignore it or tell your parents (in this case the umpires) its such a simple thing and Hansen should of ignored India’s threats to go home and focus on the issue which was the racism charge.

If symonds did provoke harbajan then he should have been mature about it instead of lashing out like a little 4 year old

What Hansen’s judgement did was to go overboard to be seen to not have been in any way ‘pressured’ by the BCCI position and in doing that, he laboured hard to demonstrate that Harbhajan had reacted to ‘provocation’ by Symonds so as to justify his findings. That was of course easy to do because Symonds had effectively opened the exchange – but Hansen conveniently ignored the fact that the apparently racial comment was in the final exchange initiated by Ahrbhajan. Symonds has been held out to dry in all of this, quite unfairly, and it is obvious from close reading of Hansen’s findings that CA wanted the whole matter done and dusted and they did not properly support Symonds or the team.

So what happened is that Hansen made a great deal of the ‘reasonable man would not find ‘monkey’ to be racially offensive – despite the fact that the ICC ( and the BCCI, incidentally) had accepted that it IS when used towards someone of Symond’s ethnicity. That then opens up practically any racially offensive comment to that defence – after all, would not the ‘reasonable man’ find that ‘curry muncher’ is a reference to gastronomic habits’, ‘Get back to your taxi’ is simply telling someone to use a form of transport etc?

Had Hansen, CA and the BCCI all come out strongly and said:’ racism is not acceptable, a racist comment is simply not acceptable in sport from anybody’ it might have helped to at least slow down this sort of crap going on, but basically in order to ‘hose down’ the situation, Hansen has fostered the idea that racist comments are really just a bit of bad behaviour. Instead of helping put the lid on the whole damn thing, he opened it up again. Yes, those who used the anti-Indian comments were dickheads but unfortunately this whole business has opened up the ‘grey area’ very badly.

As an aside, those who have followed Harbhajan’s career have noted that he is well versed in sledging in English and his use of a Punjabi term that sounds phoenetically identical to ‘monkey’ is, to say the least, not usual. Yes, technically Hansen was correct – he cannnot be proven to have used the actual word ‘monkey’ – but by working so hard to paint Symonds as the aggressor and Harbhajan as the righteously upset party Hansen has effectively diluted the whole thrust against racist comments by a huge amount. It’s going to continue, with idiots pushing the limits by twisting away from the essential fact that it is the intent behind the use of any words – the ICC Code of Conduct definition is actually spot-on right here – that they can feel they can argue ‘the reasonable man would not find racist.’

When the heat dies down, Hansen’s findings will be seen as technically correct but that by his efforts to ‘legitimise’ his findings he has served the game – and the cause of diminishing racist commentary in sport – he has done incredibly badly and coincidentally trashed Symonds and the Australian team efforts to combat racism. A sad, bad result.

I attended the seriously boring 20-20 game at the MCG on Friday and this will shock you but the Australians do the same thing but not only to the players to the supporters in the crowd as well. From all around me in the general admission I heard taunts of “get back in your Taxi” and “curry munchers”. People in massive crowds chanting “YOU ARE A WANKER” and I suddenly realized how hypocritical all this is.

I would of thought Australians would take the higher ground and show them they are better but I was wrong.

After the game a fight broke out between a young Indian supporter and a young Australian supporter… Now I have worked with Indian people for years and have never known anyone to start a brawl, its not common in their culture to start punch-ups.

Australia walked over India from Ball one, why add insult to injury?

Ill add this, that before, during and after the game racial remarks and negative taunts where made by many, not just a small handful.

In the aftermath of the overturning of the ban, a board administrator was quoted as having said something like, “We shall not stand for our boys being called racists.” Our boys? Racists? Gosh. Cue incredulity, shock, horror. (Denial.)

When Andrew Symonds was taunted with monkey chants by the crowd in Vadodara, and then in Mumbai last year, I remember some of my colleagues – educated, affluent, urban Indians, all of them – saying, “Oh, so what’s the fuss? The Australians say much worse.” (Ignorance, unknowingness, denial.) “Monkey,” they said, is hardly that offensive. To be fair, the term does not quite imply in India what it does in the UK or the US or Australia, though it’s not good enough to say that any more.

They were missing the point.

And here is another example – from my own childhood.

I grew up in a middle-class, educated Bengali household in Kolkata. The routine term to describe the complexion of someone like myself — not fair, like some of the members of my extended family — was “moila” (literally translated as “dirty”). The funny thing, I now find, was that no one thought much of having said it. It was uttered unselfconsciously — if always with a bit of regret.

They were missing the point too; but we can’t afford to do that any longer. We need to first accept that as a nation, India is among the most racist in the world. African students on the streets of Mumbai will testify to that, as will black cricketers. Then, we need to be aware of the fact that a racist insult is the absolute worst thing that you can throw at someone; and finally, we need to unshackle ourselves from this mindset.

All this is made tricky given India’s complex, disconcerting, and often inexplicable relationship with colour. The festishisation of white skin in a brown-skinned country comes bound up with an irreconcilable sense of contradiction and a notion of, often unconscious, self-loathing. Creams and lotions that claim to lighten one’s skin have for years comprised an industry worth many millions in India. Look at the matrimonial ads. Listen to some of the conversations in educated, affluent, urban households. And keep your ears pricked, particularly for the throwaway asides.

There is a lesson for Harbhajan and his mates, and for all of us, in the fact that the charge, once divorced from its racial connotation, was watered down. The lesson is that abusive language is less of an offence internationally than a racist taunt; that a Hindi phrase that isn’t, well, terribly respectful towards someone else’s mother is seen to be less criminal than calling that someone a monkey.

The sooner we learn that lesson, the better it is for Harbhajan — and the rest of the country. It will help us grow up.

well I thought he took it pretty well last night…

I think we all ready to move on..lessons we have been taught.

1) Harbi is an idiot
2) ICC are gutless turn coats
3) Phil Coorey is ‘The Roar’s’ best Ostrich

Can Harbhajan Singh?

Over to you bye.

As for the question of why not a similar charge for Symonds? Well, indeed – why not? The Indians had the right to report his language, they did not – yet they did complain about Hogg. If you actually read Hansen’s judgement, you will have noted ( but not acknowledged) the following: ‘ At the end of the over while the umpires were changing ends and the fields was crossing over to their new positions, Andrew Symonds approached Harbhajan Singh and told him that he had no friends amongst the
Australians (he admits he used the word ‘fuck’ or a derivation thereof). Singh used similar language to Symonds and neither took offence at that stage.’

Not an edifying incident, admittedly, for either party – but accepted by both as ‘honours even’ ( to abuse a phrase..) Now read on, from Hansen’s judgement: ‘However the exchange caused Singh to become angry and he motioned to Symonds
to come towards him. Singh then said something to Symonds. There is a dispute as to what was said. However all of the players who gave evidence to the hearing before Match Referee Procter of what was said between Harbhajan Singh and
Andrew Symonds namely, Harbhajan Singh, Andrew Symonds, Mathew Hayden and Michael Clarke, are all clearly of the view that in the circumstances, Harbhajan Singh used language that was (and intended by Singh to be), offensive to Andrew Symonds. Symonds took immediate offence at the language and behaviour of Singh.

Please note, in case your reading skills are selective, that Harbhajan is one of the signatories to the fact that he ‘used language that was intended to be offensive to Andrew Symonds’. It was Harbhajan who decided to take the thing to the ‘next level’, Symonds had had his little tanty and headed back to the field. If Harbhajan had left it alone all this would not have happened so how about cutting Symonds some slack? Symonds cut Harbhajan some slack in India when clear racial abuse had been directed at him; he ( and the Aussie team you crucify) had NOT officially complained about the abuse which the BCCI had accepted – somewhat grudgingly – as racist; he approached Harbhajan man-to-man to sort it out, Harbhajan did not take the honourable course to approach Symonds first. If you extended the olive branch to someone and then they apparently did the same thing again, are you so pure of heart as to not get angry?

Now, when the thing came before Procter ( p.s. do TRY to get your names correct, it would improve your case) the Indian team, as far as anybody knows – and Hansen’s judgement does nothing to suggest otherwise – did not indicate that Harbhajan had used the word ‘maaki ‘ which is pronounced ‘maun key’. Why ever not? It would have certainly introduced the possibility of mishearing on the part of the Australians and the likelihood of the charge being at the very least lowered from ‘racial vilification’ – as has been the case. Anil Kumble is a highly intelligent man and an experienced captain and he would have realised the distinction between a Level 3 charge and a Level 2 charge – give him that credit, surely – so why not present all the evidence at the initial hearing? Procter made his decision on the evidence presented; he was denied certain vital facts by the Indians.

As for your contention that Australians are the worst of the worst – have a look at the youTube of Harbhajan’s little effort with Pietersen. Now, most of us would like to tell Pietersen the same thing, but standing your ground with your stumps shattered, shouting at him ‘fuck you’? is about as bad as anything going. Australians are the only ones who attempt cheating? – Dhoni vs. Pietersen, also on YouTube – and it was an Australian umpire who gave Pietersen out, btw, so you can, frankly, blow your charges of Australian one-sidedness out your arse, sport, we give and we damn well get in return. Ponting did what the ICC required of him; he and Symonds et al, have accepted that they could have been mistaken in what they heard once the similarity of ‘maaki’ and ‘monkey’ has been made clear, and basically did NOT contest the substance of Harbhajan’s appeal.

We’d all like things out there to become less uncivilised than it now is, but to single out Australia as the only villian is bigotry.

Yea Jezza take the entire Indian team put them on a boat a sail them out of here, the lot of them. Who are they to come here and saying what they want and get away with it??

Great way to think of it really… That would be the death of cricket, get real or get over it.

Everyone had a hand in this, no one is innocent, let drop this idiotic subject and get on with Cricket. Its spiraling down the drain and becoming boring.

Sort it out on the field, leave it on the field.

If not change the rule to no one say nothing to the other team.

Anyway… I have to go to a real court. So see you later. Hopefully my client wont have to cope with any Hansen’s.

The point is this – Hansen accepted a bald faced lie – whether Modi has the power or not is irrelevant. He made the threat and his lawyer lied about it. And inconceivably Hansen accepted it without question.

I have no idea of Indias win loss ratio at home but I am guessing it is much worse than Australias. But this is a ridiculous debate, allegations of match fixing or the like must be addressed in the specific not the general. Generally all Test teams tour poorly mainly because they don’t prepare properly. Look at our Ashes loss in 2005, look at India’s preparation here.

You keep saying Hansen must have known HS had form. Form for what? He was told by his counsel assisitng HS had one conviction by the ICC, in fact he had 4 previous. Why should he have known.

I have followed Australian cricket over the years and I couldn’t tell you who got done and who hasn’t. Was Healy done for calling Ranatunga a fat c*** I don’t know, was Slats done for his carry on in India I am guessing yes, was Boof done yep remember that one, other I don’t know. McGrath and Warne would have been done at some stage but I couldn’t tell you how many times.

If you want to believe Test cricket is fundamentally corrupt then your choice is simple, watch the Pura Cup. My guess is that the Australian Team will want to keep playing and they will probably be successful. Andrew Symonds and Harbijhan Singh can decide how they want to play and the fans will decide if it is worth watching.

As to the choo choo myth there was never any sound recording of that. I believe you can find a statement from Cairns himself saying it did not happen.

The last 16 consecutive wins that Aus had, 12 were on Australian soil. So your point was? Regards Hansen’s statement about Varsha Manohar’s contention – he is absolutely correct. Lalit Modi has no authority to bring the Indian team home. The decision would have to be BCCIs and ratified by the President – Sharad Pawar. Come on JohnO for an alleged lawyer you are a bit slow. The query is – Will the ICC fine Symonds for abusing, infact starting it ? and will Proctor suspend Ponting for 5 matches for claiming false catches, as he did to Rashid Latif.

I’m afraid the Aussie cheating is far more institutionalised. Remember they introduced the 2 bouncers per over rule in the 1980s to avoid facing the Windies bowlers. Chappell’s under arm bowling is the stuff sportsmanship legends are made of as is Warnes ‘mommy gave me drugs’.

No one denies that the Aussie team is extremely talented, the obvious query is why do they still feel the need to lie and cheat when they could win honestly? genetics?

Hi Jezza,

Youve obviously missed the bit where Hansen stated that there is absolutely no proof that Bhajji used the M word. However, now in my view (please note – my view), this whole aspect of sledging or ‘Mental disintegration’ the term coined by Steve Waugh alludes to unsportsman like methods to upset the rythym of the opposing players. Now it is supposed to be fine as long as it is covered with the ‘fig leaf’ of non-racial abuse. So theoretically, Aussie players could call Indians ‘Bastards’ and get away with it because as they rightly said – it’s non racial. But it is extremely upsetting to Indians, they have a long standing tradition of respecting parents. However, it is also a fact that if the Indian team has to fight fire with fire – is there any point calling the Aussies ‘bastards’ ? For them its merely stating a fact (apologies for the generalisation but I’ve been assured by JohnO that it is ‘efficient’). So why not use terms which upset the Aussies? Is there any reason why Indians have to conform to the Aussie standards of what constitutes sledging and what becomes a bit personal?

After all the Aussie players making choo choo sounds when Chris Cairns came to the crease a few years earlier is a clear case of non-racial sledging. They were alluding the fact that Chris’s sister had died in a train accident. Now in my opinion, they should have responded by handing out breast pads to Glenn McGrath – but that’s just me. I don’t have the high standards of sportsmanship that the Aussie players appear to have.

“(India’s legal advocate) Mr Vasha Manohar has assured me that that is not the position of the BCCI and it is no more than media speculation and exaggeration.”

Thats a joke right? We have audio and video of the BCCI saying this.
It is truly implausible that anyone seriously attempting to establish the truth of a matter would accept this on face value. Hansen has suffered a huge blow to his credibility – long may he live with the shame of his actions.

If Manohar was an Australian lawyer who lied like this he would be up in front of the responsible professional board to be struck off the role. But being a kangaroo court – nothing will happen and the blind will continue to be lead by those with mercenary motives who act without regard to honor, right, or justice.

Hansen independent? I merely say he was a cog in an engineered process designed to produce only one outcome. I mean seriously – how can he not know Singh has form or at least enquire as to his form from counsel? Thats a joke right? An articled clerk wouldnt get that wrong.

Monkey Roll!!

Top marks for originiality, in all the miles of blogs I have read on this matter finally an original thought.

Please someone call Andrew Hilditch we have found our next great spinner.

And Johnno as Hansen was independent he can say what he damn well pleases and if it places the situation in some context that is helpful.

To take your point to its illogical conclusion his judgement should have been one sentence “I find the charge not proven.” Now wouldn’t that have been illuminating.

Aust won series in 56, 60, 69 and 2004, drew series in 59, 64, 86. Take out a 1-0 loss in ’79 when Australia sent the B team, the loss of a one off test in 96 umpired by known cheats Venkat and Peter Willey, 2-1 series loss in 1998 with one neutral umpire and again 2-1 loss in 2001 (principally due to Steve Waugh enforcing the follow on) and that is a pretty good record.

Or did India only fix games against other countires.

Arnie – please give examples of “lying” and “cheating” you refer to. I am sure, if you can, that I can cite a better example by an Indian player in the current series, save for claiming a close catch: the Indians did not take too many of those as I recall.

We keep winning because we train harder than any other team. Finito.

You keep whinging because, despite an inordinate amount of talent and money, you keep losing. Simple. Finito. I do have one suggestion for India, perhaps taking money out of the game would benefit their team as well. Instead of prancing around like the princesses they behave like, they might knuckle down and do some hard work.