Cricket Blog

Watch this, Gauti vs Watson and Katich. Gautam Gambhir has been banned by the ICC for 1 test match. His appeal against the ban has been rejected by ICC. As expected, Shane Watson was penalized only 10% of his match fee. Simon Katich has not even been reported for his “mental disintegration”, aka sledging, tactics.

Watch this video closely and you will see how well the Aussies play “in the spirit of the game”. If this is what they call a “gentleman’s sport” then Australia should be banned from playing any form of cricket, their Test status should be stripped, and all the trophies that they have won should be returned back. If this was the military, Australian players would have been court-martialled a long time ago.

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10 Bangladeshis want to sign up to the rebel ICL tournament. BCCI is not happy. Bangladesh Cricket Board bans these players for 10 years. What does ICC do? NOTHING. As expected. The ICC needs to make it clear that this is not tolerable. If every player decides to start playing in every other unofficial league, then there will be total chaos in the sport.

BCCI may be considered as a monolith, but atleast it is trying to keep things under control. Yes, there are arguments with that statement. Too much control is bad. But no control is even worse. ICC is no longer relevant these days as can be seen by the actions of teams who decided not to go to Pakistan for the Champions Trophy, or the recent decision by the Sri Lankan Cricket Board that allows ICL players to play for their domestic teams.

So what should ICC do in this case? The most logical step is to ban ICL and any other non-official league. Send out a strong signal that any ICL related player will be banned from participating in any official match/tournament.

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In the most recent of stupid and completely baseless allegations, the Australian public targeted Harbhajan Singh for allegedly making monkey gestures at the Sydney crowd in the first final of the Commonwealth Bank series. According some members of the crowd, Harby had made monkey gestures by scratching both armpits directed towards the spectators. However, the ICC has cleared Bhajji of any misgivings as there is no evidence.

Allan Border has come to the Indian’s defence. “I was over that side of the ground and Harbhajan was copping a fair bit of stick from the crowd. I didn’t notice any gestures at all and I thought he handled himself pretty well. I’m not so sure how serious it is,” Border said.

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Judge Hansen, from New Zealand, gave the verdict of Not Guilty to the racism charge against Harbhajan Singh in a hearing that lasted almost 6 hours. After hearing evidence from the stump microphones, Judge Hansen said that he was convinced that on all evidence submitted before him the charge of a level 3.3 offence was not proven, but that Harbhajan should be charged with a level 2.8 offence.

Harbhajan admitted that he was guilty of using foul language and so has been fined 50 percent of his match fee. A lot of supporters back in India and overseas will find this justice, and it may be, but the way it has been achieved leaves a sour taste.

The initial ban on Habhajan should have been handled more professionally. When you are charging a high profile player from the biggest money-making machine for the ICC, one has to be careful and thoughtful about the possible ramifications. Mike Proctor was guilty of failing on both counts. He made the mistake of believing Andrew Symonds’ and Matty Hayden’s word against Harbhajan Singh and Sachin Tendulkar’s. When there are witnesses from both sides testifying to different things, even a common person knows that a judge needs more conclusive evidence. Proctor ignored this basic rule to brand Bhajji racist. He lost his reputation. Australia lost the battle then and there.

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