Need to know video: Singh's alleged racial slur

There was a sense of relief last night that the crisis in the affairs of world cricket, which would have been guaranteed had the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) carried out its implied threat to call off the tour to Australia, was averted for the time being at least when it became apparent that the country’s governing body was going to make its protest by the book.

Cancellation would have been a foolish move on the BCCI’s part and an expensive one for everyone except the lawyers. But it has done the game a favour by stirring up the other issues raised by the Sydney Test, notably foul-mouthed sledging, cheating and the helplessness of umpires. Racism is an additionally serious issue, of course, but in this case I am not sure that it is not a red herring.

As things stand, Harbhajan Singh has been banned for three Tests after an allegation of a “racist” comment that Mike Procter, the match referee, found to be proven. India officials deny that Harbhajan used the word “monkey” in his heated exchange with Andrew Symonds. Australia players claim otherwise. We shall see what the ICC’s appeals commissioner makes of it when the procedure for appeals, laid out in minute detail in the ICC’s Code of Conduct rules, results in a verdict.

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

Related Links

• World media split over Harbhajan affair

Procter, who seems, by chance, to be a somewhat accident-prone referee, has been through all this before. The high dudgeon in Sydney is small beer compared with the nationalistic fervour aroused when Pakistan refused to continue their 2006 Test match at the Brit Oval. Nevertheless, the righteous indignation of India’s players, followers and administrators is understandable. Australia, the nonpareils of world sledging, have come out of the second Test not only with a sixteenth successive victory but also, if Harbhajan’s appeal is not successful, with their opponents denied the services for the last two Tests of the bowler who keeps getting Ricky Ponting out.

This feeling of injustice is not quite a repetition of Bodyline, but it has the same basis in wounded national pride. By telling the world that only one side is playing this series in the spirit of the game, Anil Kumble, the India captain – unwittingly, I suspect – almost echoed Bill Woodfull.

There was something about the wording of the earlier statement by Sharad Pawar, the BCCI president, too, that hinted at the most emotive word in the 1932 cable from the Australia board to MCC: “Unsportsmanlike”.

Somehow, Australia always seem to get the rub of the green at home. Visiting teams have been getting furious with umpires there since Don Bradman refused to walk when Jack Ikin was convinced that he had caught him early on England’s first postwar tour, and probably long before.

Strangely enough, neutral officials seem no less prone unconsciously to favouring Australia on their home grounds: witness Andrew Strauss’s ill-luck in the Ashes series last year, not to mention leg-befores not granted for Matthew Hoggard and James Anderson.

Of course, the Australia players are often hard done by, too, but they usually win and these things rankle less with a winning side.

To my mind there was nothing worse in the recent game than Michael Clarke failing to walk after he had cut his first ball off the face of the bat to slip. That was enough to make me think that Australia are backing the wrong man if they want Clarke, not Mike Hussey, to be their next captain.

Wise men, meanwhile, are calling for the umpires to be rescued from their human fallibility. The MCC world cricket committee, including Tony Lewis, Geoff Boycott, Martin Crowe, Courtney Walsh and Barry Richards, is urging the ICC to reconsider the idea that players should be allowed to refer umpiring decisions to the television official - the plan advocated so vehemently by Duncan Fletcher, the former England head coach.

What we certainly do not need is any reignition of the recent power struggle between the ICC and the BCCI, one that looked distinctly possible when Pawar said at first yesterday that “serious thought” was being given to whether the tour should continue.

BCCI officials should be the first to realise the possible financial implications of suspending the tour, having squeezed it in as the latest in a remorseless chain of series - England in England, Australia at home (one-day internationals only) and then Pakistan at home, immediately before setting off to play the strongest cricket nation on earth with no time to acclimatise to local conditions.