Need to know video: Singh's alleged racial slur

As relations between India and Australia reached breaking point in the fallout from Harbhajan Singh being found guilty of racially abusing Andrew Symonds, irate India fans burnt effigies of the Australia team and the umpires and demanded that their players be recalled home to restore national pride.

The Board of Control for Cricket in India would incur a $2.3 million (about £1.17 million) fine for such a radical move, but it appears to have public opinion behind it. A poll conducted by Times Now, the English-language television news channel based in Bombay, revealed that 72 per cent wanted India to pull out of the tour immediately.

The furore erupted after Harbhajan, the off-spin bowler nicknamed Bhajji, allegedly referred to Symonds as a “monkey”. The 27-year-old Sikh from the Punjabi town of Jalandhar, whose competitive passions can spill over into fiery outbursts on the field, denied the charge and his mother, Avtar, described the ban as “totally unjustified”.

Expert View

The reason the row has got out of hand is not because of racism. It is because too soft a line has been taken on the practice of sledging for far too long

Simon Barnes

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BACKGROUND

• Bucknor axed in Test cricket racism row

• Cricket split by 'Bollyline' tour

• India’s wounded national pride

• The slippery slope of sledging

BACKGROUND

• Procter haunted by controversy

• Controversy timeline

• Other cricketing controversies

• 'Bring them home' say majority of fans

BACKGROUND

• Australia finds little in which to glory

• World media split over Harbhajan affair

Multimedia

• Are Australia bad sports?

• Echoes of Bodyline series

• Patrick Kidd on Steve Bucknor decision

“Indian team, come back home,” dozens of fans chanted in downtown Jammu, the winter capital of India’s Jammu-Kashmir state, as they set fire to effigies of Mark Benson and Steve Bucknor, the umpires, accusing them of poor decisions against India.

Angry fans also came out on the streets in the western town of Vadodara and the northern city of Kanpur, the Press Trust of India news agency reported.

“Sydney disaster: When umpires won and cricket lost”, the front-page headline in The Pioneer said, while The Indian Express proclaimed “Team India c Benson b Bucknor”.

“This was not a good advertisement for the world champions, those who run the game or the game itself. It was just not cricket,” The Hindustan Times said. “Many people were in tears by the end. Others were furious. All across the ground and outside, there was a sense of disbelief and shock, a feeling of injustice having being done to India.”

The issue has exposed entrenched bad blood between the teams, which goes back to 1981. Most recently, the mutual antipathy came to the surface when Symonds was abused during a tour last year, when India fans in Bombay made monkey noises and gestures.

Yesterday, however, few Indian newspapers mentioned that incident, choosing to highlight a “black Sunday” in international cricket and accusing the Australia players of cheating and the umpires of incompetence for a litany of “blunders down under”.

Milind Rege, a former first-class cricketer, told the DNA website: “The Aussies have sledged all their lives and now they are whining about another player giving it back to them.”