Hard-hitting cricket columnist Peter Roebuck, who had called for Ricky Ponting’s head for his poor leadership during the dramatic final moments of the Sydney Test that Australia won, has now hit out at the Indian cricket establishment for setting a “dreadful precedent” in their handling of the Harbhajan Singh controversy.“India’s performance in chartering a plane to take the players back home in the event of an independent judge finding against them in the Harbhajan Singh case counted amongst the most nakedly aggressive actions taken in the history of a notoriously fractious game. If this is the way the Indian board intends to conduct its affairs hereafter, then God help cricket,” Roebuck wrote in The Sydney Morning Herald.“It is high time the elders of the game in that proud country stopped playing to the gallery and considered the game’s wider interests. India is not some tin pot dictatorship but an international powerhouse, and ought to think and act accordingly. Brinkmanship or not, threatening to take their bat and ball home in the event of a resented verdict being allowed to stand was an abomination. It sets a dreadful precedent. What price justice now?” asked Roebuck before calling Harbhajan “a hothead with an unpleasant tongue”.The former Somerset captain, widely respected in world cricket circles for his reading of the game, then digs to two earlier instances where the Australians could have felt aggrieved in India. Australia “were entitled to take a stand and demand a hearing — especially after their disgraceful treatment by the crowd and a local umpire in Mumbai not long ago (not to mention in Kolkata in 2004) last October,” he wrote.Roebuck’s reference to the Kolkata TVS Cup tri-series final in 2003-04 where Australia won by 37 runs is vague because most of the decisions taken by the two umpires A V Jayaprakash (India) and David Shepherd (England) did not give rise to any debate. And as far as the crowd there goes, Roebuck, who was present to cover that match, had written then: “A final at Eden is bigger — in terms of atmosphere — than a final at Lord’s or the MCG. Why? The people.”But his reference to the local umpire in Mumbai is no surprise. Be it the dubious decision on Brad Hogg (caught at short-leg) or the Murali Kartik caught-behind appeal that was turned down, Australia can rightfully claim to have got a raw deal from Indian umpire Amish Saheba.Eventually, the visitors lost the game by two wickets, with the ninth-wicket partnership of 53 runs between Kartik and Zaheer Khan seeing India through.To top it all, Mumbai made headlines in a rather ugly way, with a section of the crowd snapped on camera making monkey gestures at Andrew Symonds. Symonds in Sydney had claimed that Harbhajan had racially abused him by calling him a “monkey” — the charge was downgraded yesterday after the ICC appeals panel said it could not be proved.In his latest column, Roebuck also came down hard on attempts by Cricket Australia and BCCI to “broker a compromise” on the Harbhajan issue. “All around, it has been a bad business. Over the years, India have often been represented by gentlemen with high principles and a strong sense of sportsmanship. Australia have not been so fortunate. But it seems that power has corrupted. It was intolerable that India’s one-day players were sent to Adelaide when they ought to have been practising hard in Melbourne,” he wrote. “It was not an implied threat to the justice system. It was a direct challenge to it. India took part in the creation of the legal framework they disregarded. If the Indians had packed their bags, Australia should have refused to appear in India next season,” he added.Roebuck’s earlier column in the same newspaper after the Sydney Test had sparked worldwide furore when he called for an “arrogant” Ponting to resign for turning “a bunch of professional cricketers into a pack of wild dogs”. Roebuck was objecting to Australia’s over-aggressive attitude in a match scarred by bad umpiring.
