Symonds and the monkey saga

This is one of the worst cases in recent memory to take place on and off cricket field. Sydney test was moving fine despite India not getting rub of the green, and struggling to match the 11 Australians and 2 very unbiased or incompetent (jury is still out) umpires, Mr. Harbhajan tried to play a deft shot on a searing yorker from Mr. Lee. Of course Mr. Singh made himself made a monkey out of himself, but he revived himelf by acknowledging how good that ball was. Mr. Symonds took an exception and here I am writing what must be a millionth column in past few days. Well if reader would like to know that what is my take, please read on.

One has to look at this incident holistically and unfortunately only two writers have done that, one is Mukul Kesavan and second Harsha Bhogle, both Indians. Now lets look first at the allegations, Australians believed it was racial in nature, may be it was. Harbhajan is no saint, as we all agree, but behind every act of crime, there is a motive, and no act should be taken out of the context and assessed for verdict. If Symonds believed that test match field is no place to be friendly than Harbhajan has all the right to tell Mr. Symonds how savage he is, and it won't be unfair. As for Mr. Ponting, we all have been in school and colleges and even at home where teacher asks us to report every mischief a mate commits. But do we go and report it all, we don;t because there is life beyond such incident and there is relation to tend.

Unfortunately, Mr. Ponting didn't have the vision to realize it. I always believed that captainship in cricket is synonymous with leadership; Mr. ponting had put a doubt to that. A leader has to has this vision, a clarity of thought, which Ponting didn't have. There was a saying in spiderman movie that "great power brings great responsibility", Ponting failed miserably to understand this repsonsibility. Agreed, its a responsibility for a leader to stand up for its team mate, but he failed to understand the game of cricket is worth much more than self invited offense of a savage beast(disclosure:- this use of term is generic and not racial). Now again, by showing his resentment on the decision, which is factual, rational and more legitimate, he has shown a total lack of leadership skill. Knowing where to field his man is great art, but to know when, why and how to field one thoughts is greater.

Mr.Procter also had his share of involvement in this sorry saga. He was the clear evident why Indians and other players from subcontinent have been on the wrong side of law. He refused to see the arguement and context, and we all have to go through this sorry saga. He said, being in south africa he understands what raical slurr is, we can't deny that but, what he could not see was the preceeding incidents and faile to envison suceeding ones. We all should agree that he was inept and raises a question about integrity and aptitudes of match referee. He was no more than Ponting in disguise, taking words of few selected men as they were written laws. If one looks at the history, the most disgusting scenes in the field of cricket has mostly been involving Australians. Incident involving Glenn McGrath and Ramnaresh Sarwan is still fresh in the mind. No. of years Glenn Mcgrath went on to play after that is a representation of where true power lied. Australians must accept this changing time.