Back to the position:there is no question of cancelling tour

[Guest dada_rocks]

Earlier stand was that if Bhajji is not cleared tour will be over. There is another u-turn on that stand apparently tour will go on irrespective of verdict.. http://cricket.indiatimes.com/BCCI_withdraws_pull-out_threat_of_Australia_tour/articleshow/2695199.cms

[Guest BossBhai]

-- Removed on request of the user --

[Guest dada_rocks]

Lallojee wants team india to coem back.. now our of sheer spite for great lalooji I want them to stay there and play :giggle: http://cricket.indiatimes.com/India_tour_Down_Under/News/Lalu_wants_Team_India_to_return_home/articleshow/2694939.cms

[Ram]

You will hear all sorts of contradictory statements in the coming days. If anybody here thinks the cancellation of the tour was something that may happen, you are just deluding yourselves. Such things dont happen in international politics/sports/gamesmanship. BCCI was just merely posturing, pushing the threshold, to convey the impression as though they were deadly serious. Of course if BCCI had mailed the ICC " We request you to kindly consider our plea for replacing the umpires for Perth and lift and ban on Bhajji", ICC wouldnt have budged. So, they shot a mail with " If such and such doesnt happen, we wouldnt be averse to canceling out Tour". That got the ICC working and we got what we wanted. EVEN if bhajji's ban isnt lifted, the tour will go on. There were will be some compromise. Dont be surprised if the appeals hearing is postponed due to "unavoidable circumstances". The BEST face saving for formula for both the ICC and BCCI is to have appeals hearing after the ODIs gets over.

[beetle]

The bag of maggots!

[Rajiv]

..aww shucks, an insult to our poll here. Did he even see our email or we were like million others

[Rajiv]

You will hear all sorts of contradictory statements in the coming days. If anybody here thinks the cancellation of the tour was something that may happen, you are just deluding yourselves. Such things dont happen in international politics/sports/gamesmanship. BCCI was just merely posturing, pushing the threshold, to convey the impression as though they were deadly serious. Of course if BCCI had mailed the ICC " We request you to kindly consider our plea for replacing the umpires for Perth and lift and ban on Bhajji", ICC wouldnt have budged. So, they shot a mail with " If such and such doesnt happen, we wouldnt be averse to canceling out Tour". That got the ICC working and we got what we wanted. EVEN if bhajji's ban isnt lifted, the tour will go on. There were will be some compromise. Dont be surprised if the appeals hearing is postponed due to "unavoidable circumstances". The BEST face saving for formula for both the ICC and BCCI is to have appeals hearing after the ODIs gets over.

..damn, and I was thinking a BCCI group with Pak, Lanka, Bang, Windies, SA, Zim playing amongst each other and back to Ashes with Eng/Aus

[fineleg]

Cut-and-paste from DR's URL reference for easy reading here: Spineless BCCI!

The Indian cricket board has withdrawn the threat to pull out of the ongoing Australian tour if a ban on Harbhajan Singh was not overturned by the International Cricket Council. "There is no question of the tour being called off," board spokesman Rajiv Shukla quoted president Sharad Pawar as saying on Saturday. "He (Pawar) said the two boards intend to maintain good relations as there is no problem with the two," Shukla said. Harbhajan was banned for three tests after being found guilty of making a racist remark to Australian all-rounder Andrew Symonds during last week's controversial second test in Sydney. However, the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) and its players have denied any racist remark was made by Harbhajan, with the board threatening to pull out unless the player was exonerated on appeal. The ICC has appointed New Zealand High Court judge John Hansen as appeals commissioner but has yet to set a date for the hearing. Pawar has said the Indian board would like the appeal to be heard before the One-day series in Australia starts on February 3. India is to play in a triangular series in Australia, also involving Sri Lanka, next month after the conclusion of the four-Test series.

[Chandan]

So doing a little round up here: Wrongs and rights in India-Australia cricket Ramesh Thakur The ICC is an antiquated arrangement lurching from one crisis to another. The BCCI should accept nothing less than “not proven” at best and a total reversal of the conviction and punishment of their player. — PHOTO: AFP Harbhajan Singh giving the ball to umpire Steve Bucknor on the final day of the second Test against Australia at the Sydney Cricket Ground. While my cricketing heart has always beaten to the pulsating fortunes of the Indian team, in my head I have long admired the way the Aussies played the game: hard but true and fair. They were the ultimate examples of a thoroughly professional approach to the game under demanding modern conditions. Somewhere along the way, they lost the plot. It is sad to see a team of champions stooping to conquer. Moreover, in a curious combination of the bully and tantrum-throwing spoilt brat syndromes, they can dish it out but not take it. They seem to believe in a God-given right to determine unilaterally just where the boundaries of good and impermissible behaviour lie. At the end of the disgraceful farce in Sydney, I felt proud to identify with Anil Kumble’s dignity in undeserved defeat against Ricky Ponting’s smugness, triumphalism, and precious protestations of innocence in unearned victory. Indeed only one side played in the spirit of the game, and all cricket fans throughout the world know it. One team stands diminished, and it isn’t the Indians. An online poll in The Age (Melbourne) on the morning of January 8, no matter how unrepresentative, showed 81 per cent of respondents believe Australian cricketers are bad sports. In his regular column for the same paper on January 8, Peter Roebuck suggested in a strongly worded article that Cricket Australia should sack Ponting for his “arrogant and abrasive conduct.” Certainly Ponting’s ongoing comments show that he still doesn’t get it and therefore Roebuck’s advice is germane. India was beaten comprehensively in the first Test in Melbourne. No Indian — player, manager, journalist, or fan — claimed that the result was due to anything other than the team’s own abject performance. Perhaps the Indian cricket board deserved some blame for not scheduling adequate preparation time before matching up with the acknowledged world champions on their home ground. The tag of sore losers doesn’t wash. To its credit, the team picked itself up from the depths of demoralisation in Melbourne and came out firing on all cylinders in Sydney. They were gutted by umpiring errors and unsporting behaviour by Australian batsmen, including the captain, on the first day itself. And still they picked themselves up magnificently once again to make a game of it, only to be destroyed by still more umpiring blunders on the final day. A record-equalling triumph? They are welcome to it. Instead of adding glory to their previous triumphs, this will rather tarnish the quality of their early victories. Marginal decisions that do eventually even out one can understand. Umpiring blunders of this magnitude and series-deciding impact are something else. Lacking the judgment and sense to retire gracefully, Steve Bucknor should have been put to pasture after the World Cup. Astonishingly, in the Sydney Test his fellow umpire matched him in gross incompetence and was joined also by the third umpire. As for the adjudicator giving the man of the match award to Andrew Symonds, I like his sense of irony-laced humour. And now we have the injustice meted out to Harbhajan Singh. If the match referee was going to do his job properly, he should have found Yuvraj Singh guilty of dissent in the first Test and fined him substantially for it. To add insult to injury, they have taken the collective word of the Australian team against that of the Indian team. The match referee thus joins the on and off field umpires in this travesty of serial provocations to India. Ponting’s cheek in registering dissent at being given out long after he had been allowed to bat on despite being out, and knowing he was out, was exceeded only by Symonds’ chutzpah in complaining about Harbhajan’s remarks. Someone should explain to Ponting, Symonds & Co. that their approach to the game casts far more aspersions on their nation than any comment anyone else may make. Harbhajan is a hot-headed young man who needs to curb his exuberance and control his temper. There is nothing in his record, however, to suggest he initiates confrontations. By contrast, the Australians are notorious the world over for their provocative sledging and are also acquiring a reputation for not being able to cope with retaliation in kind. Little wonder that former Pakistan great Wasim Akram has called them “cry babies” for their performance in Sydney. A just outcome would have seen India win the Sydney Test and square the series. An acceptable outcome would have been an honourable draw against the rub of monumental umpiring mistakes. A series-deciding loss is intolerable and should be treated as such by the Indian Board. Unless Bhajji’s teammates are lying to the Indian press and people, neither they nor the umpires heard anything to corroborate the Australians’ charge. The match referee decides that the Indians are lying and Australians telling the truth. Please. The ICC must move away from rank amateurishness and select people with some grasp of due process and diplomatic skills that will help to defuse tensions instead of inflaming them further. For that matter, the ICC is an antiquated arrangement, managing the equivalent of a major multinational corporation, whose work method seems to be to lurch from one crisis to another instead of providing strategic leadership. It suffers from a severe bout of the head in the ostrich affliction: “What, me worry?” The BCCI should accept nothing less than “not proven” at best and a total reversal of the conviction and punishment of their player. Secondly, if the result of Sydney is to be allowed to stand, then the two Boards should agree immediately to an emergency fifth Test in order to restore some credibility and life to the series. Since so much of the bad behaviour is widely attributed to the growing commercialisation and commodification of the game, it is worth putting the argument in the language of business. The cricketing ‘industry’ is supported by a global base of consumers, most of whom are concentrated in the subcontinent. They pay generously to maintain the wealthy lifestyles of the cricketers, the umpires and the officials. The ‘product’ delivered to the paying spectators in Sydney and the worldwide television audience was defective. They are entitled to demand an exchange of the goods or else must be given a full refund. Thirdly, and still on the commercial theme, Indian firms and sponsors should withdraw contracts and product endorsements by the Australians. That is a language, perhaps the only language, they understand. Their brand value stands much diminished in the Indian market. Fourthly, Mr. Bucknor should be thanked generously for his contributions to the game — which have been enormous over a considerable length of time — and invited to spend quality time with his family. Mark Benson should be relegated to officiating at appropriate levels until he gains more maturity and experience. Finally, they should bring in immediately the challenge system used in tennis which is a fair compromise between using technology without recklessly delaying the game. Each team could be permitted up to three challenges per innings communicated to the umpire through the captain. If a challenge is upheld by the third umpire, the number of challenges remaining in the team’s credit ledger is not changed. If it is rejected, one challenge is deducted. An additional option would be to build on the captains’ agreement that did not quite work as hoped for in Sydney. If in doubt, umpires could be empowered to ask the batsmen concerned directly if they had nicked the ball. With modern technology that will quickly catch a lie out, this would make it difficult for batsmen, who usually know whether or not the bat touched the ball on the way through to the wicket-keeper, to be dishonest. Yet it neither wastes time nor undermines the on-field umpires’ authority. (Ramesh Thakur, an Australian citizen and a former professor at the Australian National University, is Distinguished Fellow at the Centre for International Governance Innovation and Professor of Political Science at the University of Waterloo in Canada. His passion for cricket has been put on temporary hold.) ------------------------------------------------------------------ I think this article has more or less expressed all the points that I felt after the Sydney match. What about you? Would you like to add something or disagree with something here?

[Donny]

BCCI was just merely posturing' date=' pushing the threshold, to convey the impression as though they were deadly serious.[/quote'] Much like most of you have been doing in here, mm ? :regular_smile:

[Chandan]

Sunil Gavaskar has given his views as: Well-played, Indian cricket board Every time an Australian cricketer is reported for unpleasant behaviour, the standard line of defence is, 'what happens on the field should stay on it'. But when it comes to them getting something back, then it's to be reported. Sunil Gavaskar Former India captain On the Sydney controversy. THE BCCI deserves praise for standing behind its team in the crisis that has enveloped it after Harbhajan Singh was handed out a three-match ban by the match referee for a 'racial' slur at Andrew Symonds. The offspinner has denied having used the word, which has caused offence and in the absence of any audio recording and most crucially with both umpires not having heard it, the charge should have been dropped straightaway for lack of corroborating evidence. By accepting the word of the Australian players and not the Indian players, the match referee has exposed himself to the charge of taking a decision based not on facts, but on emotion. Worse still, his decision has incensed millions of Indians, who are quite understandably asking why his decision shouldn't be considered a racist one considering the charges that were levied on Harbhajan were of a racist remark. Bias apparent MILLIONS OF Indians want to know if it was a 'white man' taking the 'white man's' word against that of the 'brown man'. Quite simply if there was no audio evidence nor did the officials hear anything then the charge did not stand. This is what has incensed the millions of Indians who are flabbergasted that the word of one of the greatest players in the history of the game, Sachin Tendulkar, was not accepted. In effect, Tendulkar has been branded a liar by the match referee. At the hearing the Indians were represented by the manager Chetan Chauhan, the media manager Dr M.V Sridhat the skipper Anil Kumble and the two men at the crease when the incident was said to have happened, Sachin Tendulkar and Harbhajan Singh. Ponting claimed he didn't hear anything nor did Gilchrist, so it all boiled down to the word of Hayden and Clarke and don't forget Clarke had stood his ground after being caught at first slip and claiming that debatable catch of Ganguly Benson as off form as Bucknor THE BCCI quite rightly respected Tendulkar's word and asked its team not to carry on with the tour The BCCI also asked that since the team had lost confidence in the umpire Steve Bucknor that he should not be officiating the next Test at Perth. Here the ICC too deserves praise for the swiftness with which it tried to defuse the tension by removing Bucknor from the duties of umpiring at Perth. But the ICC will do well to keep in mind that there were two umpires out there who had a bad game and not penalise only one or it could be up against a racist charge too. Ironically on the morning that the racism allegation against Harbhajan was made, one pa- per in Australia had a feature on Bucknor with his photograph with the catch line that he earns $440 an hour to make mistakes. Typically it forgot the other umpire Mark Benson who wasn't exactly blameless in the game. Or did they really forget? Or was it simply that a black man's errors were more highlighted than a white man's? Throughout, as the controversy unfolded, it was only Bucknor that the Aussie media was pillorying and not Benson. You form your opinion whether it was racist or not. Dangerous precedent THE MOMENT a charge is upheld without any tangible proof and foolproof substantiation, it leaves the door open for similar charges to be made. Just suppose a team wants to get rid of a player who is a threat to them. The simplest thing to do is to have some players to say that there was a racist taunt directed at them and then it's their word against the player who is accused if one goes by the recent verdict. So if Wasim Jaffer, who is having a hard time against Brett Lee, makes an allegation that he has been racially abused, then with out any proof he could get Lee out for three Tests or more. That is the danger in this verdict and that's why the BCCI is absolutely right in backing its man. Aussie double standards THE AUSTRALIAN cricket media, which is almost like the extended support staff of the team, is doing its best to portray the whole issue as that of an umpiring one rather than the slur on Harbhajan Singh and Tendulkar's integrity Not one has stopped to think that if it was the reverse case and the word of their team member wasn't accepted how they would have felt. And now as the charge against Brad Hogg is to be heard, they are now scouring footage to find out where Indians have used any offensive language and have targeted Ishant Sharma for using a Hindi expletive after his appeal for that catch off Symonds was disallowed. The difference is that Ishant's expletive was not directed at Symonds or the umpire Steve Bucknor but in the direction of backward point and while that is no excuse to use foul language there's a difference when a player is targeted and when a foul word is used at no one in particular If that is going to be the Australian defence for Hogg then all the Indians have to do is to crank up footage of every over that Australia bowled and they will find an abuse there just about every time. Every time an Australian team has been cited for their behaviour on the field the standard line of defence that has been trotted out is, 'what happens on the field should stay on it'. They seem to think that the worst of abusive language directed at a player and his family should stay on the field but when it comes to them getting something back then it's to be reported. They also say that they play the game hard but fair One would like to know exactly what is meant by 'hard' and what is their concept of 'fair' so that the rest of us ignoramuses are better informed than we are at the moment. And yes, while they are at it, also let the rest of the cricketing world know what exactly is the 'spirit of cricket' as they see it. Sunil Gavaskar Former India captain On the Sydney controversy. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Now is the job well done by BCCI? I don't think so. As one fan put it somewhere: As usual, the Australians are having the last laugh! Lets see what we gained and what we lost: 1. We lost the game due to blatantly biased umpiring. THe records will show that we lost, and not that Bucknor was removed the next game. Nobody is even talking about this unfair result. 2. The oz umpires made sure that Ponting got his 16th win. You can also bet that they will ensure his 17th win in Perth. 3. Symmonds definitely said something nasty to Bhajji, but no one is talking about it. Nor about talking action against Ponting, Clarke for cheating, dissent etc. As Prem Panicker pointed out, Rashid was penalised, why not Ponting? 4. Bhajji has been banned, and his hearing is now, very conveniently, not going to be heard before Indians return after the ODI series. I am sure it is the BCCI that is behind this delay, and not CA/ICC (though they will also play along as is suits them as well). You can guess the reasons for BCCi wanting this delay. 5. BCCI said it was 100% with the Indian team which did not want to continue with the tour till Bhajji is cleared- and see what is happening now! Actually, the right mouth of BCCI said it was with the team, the left mouth denied what the right mouth said. 6. CA has suported EVERY move and statement of Ponting and team- they have never been apologetic, like the Indians and BCCI. CA has never made any U-turn, like the BCCI, Kumble and even Tendulkar. CAs attitude is ‘we will call you bastards, or even f*** h***, we will concoct stories and get your main players banned, and we will blame you for it all. Take it or lump it". 7.When Steve Waugh wants to mediate, the fawning and obsequious team Manager Sridhar starts singing praises of Steve saying how much we respect Steve in India, blah-blah. Typical subservient sycophantic Indian mentality of the babus. And see how Ponting responed to his fellow oz. In short, the Indian players have to swallow their pride, if they had any, play the rest of the tour, and in the end not get Bhajji cleared. You can also bet the Hoggs will be cleared as well. And BCCI will pay the Aus the highest in the IPL, and provide red carpet welcome to Ponting, Clarke, MCGrath etal. The very same people who have cticised Kumble, Tendulkar and co now. The Indian cricket fans have already forgetten the injustice and unfairness, and are eagerly looking forward to more of the same in the next game. And the next. We never learn, and we never really support our players, so why should they risk their careers for us? BTW, did any one find out why Speed was livid with Procter for not ruling against Yuvraj, but somehow seems to have lost his vocal chords when it came to Ponting, Clarke et al? And do you still want to know why after Speed was angry with him, Procter banned Bhajji without any factual basis? Would you not want to please your master the next chance you get if he was upset with you? So, what is the good job done, BCCI???

[Guest BossBhai]

-- Removed on request of the user --

[yoda]

Sounds like a quid pro quo. BCCI says won't threaten to cancel tour. ICC clears Harbhajan of racial taunt and fines/bans him for a lesser offense.

[beetle]

:angry_smile::angry_smile::angry_smile::angry_smile:

[fineleg]

BCCI org must be abolished first before anything useful can be achieved in Ind. cricket BCCI the useless :angry_smile:

[Guest dada_rocks]

BCCI hs thrown in: will not charge Hogg too.. Going back to same old tamasha

[Chandan]

In short, the Indian players have to swallow their pride, if they had any, play the rest of the tour, and in the end not get Bhajji cleared. You can also bet the Hoggs will be cleared as well. And BCCI will pay the Aus the highest in the IPL, and provide red carpet welcome to Ponting, Clarke, MCGrath etal. The very same people who have cticised Kumble, Tendulkar and co now. The Indian cricket fans have already forgetten the injustice and unfairness, and are eagerly looking forward to more of the same in the next game. And the next. We never learn, and we never really support our players, so why should they risk their careers for us? BTW, did any one find out why Speed was livid with Procter for not ruling against Yuvraj, but somehow seems to have lost his vocal chords when it came to Ponting, Clarke et al? And do you still want to know why after Speed was angry with him, Procter banned Bhajji without any factual basis? Would you not want to please your master the next chance you get if he was upset with you? So, what is the good job done, BCCI???

So the Australians are having the last laugh indeed, with Indians otherwise or being forced to withdraw the charges on Hogg. Well done BCCI!!!:devil_smile:

[SachDan]

If the ban on Harbhajan is removed then its a good omen for the rest of the series.