Is this cricket?

Indian cricketers did not proceed to Canberra on Monday, as scheduled, for a practice match. This gesture is as big a sign of protest as there can be. Schedules are sacrosanct in international cricket 8212; like the show, the tour must always go on. This was not the way the Australia tour was supposed to go. Some of India8217;s most special players 8212; Tendulkar, Dravid, Ganguly, Kumble 8212; are taking a last bow down under. These men, along with Laxman and Harbhajan, are part of a team that even while going through a rough patch has pulled out its best and more when facing the Australian champions 8212; in India 2001 and in Australia 2003-04. In Sydney, India attempted just that. But incompetent umpiring took the match away from them. And late at night came word that their rather more exuberant mate had been held guilty of casting racist slurs. If the players appear besieged into inaction, don8217;t blame them.

They have been failed by the BCCI. The players who bring the BCCI so much wealth and clout have been revealed to be on their own, unable to call in the support services every sportsperson representing his country should take for granted. The truth is, when Harbhajan was summoned for the hearing with the match referee, he was walking into a trial fraught with cultural misunderstandings. In October, when the Australians first levelled charges of racism against spectators in Vadodara, we had in these columns pointed to the cultural disconnect. Yet, the BCCI, which has on call the best legal assistance, chose to leave Harbhajan8217;s defence solely to his teammates, even as news came in that a lawyer was being flown in to assist the match referee.

If this is a crisis for Indian cricket, so it is for the Australians. They play hard, they talk rude, they fight for every run, every wicket 8212; and we admired them for it. The Sydney Test was especially electrified by their determination to equal their own record of 16 consecutive Test wins. On the days after that achievement they are visibly constrained to be defensive about the way they won. Ricky Ponting and his men must wonder, did they pull out one stop too many? For a team known for unabashed rudeness, to hope to explain every appeal and protestation on the field as being born of integrity and politeness is, frankly, very rich.