Indian batting great Sunil Gavaskar has accused Australian cricket of having “a misplaced belief that they are the only ones with honesty”.
After a spiteful Indian tour of Australia this summer in which the Australian players accused Harbhajan Singh of racially abusing Andrew Symonds, Gavaskar made the amazing claim that white South African match referee Mike Procter was biased against Indian players because of their skin colour.
International Cricket Council (ICC)appeals commissioner, Justice John Hansen, found in January that claims Harbhajan called Symonds a “monkey” during the second Test could not be proven.
The result meant India withdrew a pledge to abandon their tour of Australia if Harbhajan’s initial guilty verdict for racial vilification wasn’t overturned.
Gavaskar, who is ICC’s cricket committee chief, has had another crack at Australia today in a column which appeared in Mumbai’s Mid-Day newspaper.
The former Indian captain says India are becoming increasingly powerful and Australia and England had better get used to it.
But despite fears the Indian Premier League Twenty20 competition will lure star players away from Test cricket to the fast bucks available on the sub-continent, Gavaskar says cricket is in safe hands.
“Gone are the days when two countries, England and Australia, had the veto power in international cricket, even though the dinosaurs, still trying to voice their prejudiced opinions in the media, may not open their eyes and see the reality,” Gavaskar wrote in his syndicated newspaper column published today.
“The cricketing world has found that India has no longer a diffident voice in the international cricketing community, but a confident one that knows what is good for its cricket, and will strive to get it.
“What may have worried these people was the manner in which India defended its player Harbhajan Singh on the ‘racist’ allegation made against him.
“When all the technology in the world was unable to prove that he had indeed said anything, these guys, especially those in Australia, having got so used to getting it their way, were unable to stomach it.”
While India lost the controversy-laden four-Test series in Australia 2-1, they won the one-day tri-series finals 2-0 and remain the financial heavyweights of world cricket.
After Indian board chief Sharad Pawar was awarded the ICC presidency for 2010, the shortlisting of Inderjit Bindra as a possible successor to Malcolm Speed as ICC chief executive did not go down well with the British and Australian press, Gavaskar said.
“As soon as Mr Bindra’s name was announced there were a flurry of articles in England and Australia that giving him the job would put too much power in India’s hands,” Gavaskar said.
The ICC, however, has selected South African Imtiaz Patel as its preferred candidate to take over as chief executive.
“Those worried of the prospect of India’s hegemony were conveniently forgetting that only a few years back, there were two Australians at the top of the ICC.
“Once again, it is a misplaced belief that they are the only ones with honesty, integrity and have the welfare of the game at heart, while the ‘subcontinentals’ do not.
“Every controversy in international cricket has shown that no country has the monopoly on honesty and integrity, and so should not be looking down upon others.
“Still, it is a habit that is hard to get over, and so it is anathema to think that those who were the ruled can one day become the rulers.”
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