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First and foremost, as a wise man once said - shit or get off the pot.

Either continue with the tour and abide by the decision of the judge, whenever it may be handed down. Or go home.

Holding the threat of a cancelled tour over the heads of the Australian team, the Australian public and the ICC is very clearly “not in the spirit of the game.” It’s never been part of good sportsmanship to take your ball and go home if a decision doesn’t go your way. Harping on about the Australian team’s lack of sportsmanship while continuing to threaten the governing body if you don’t get your way only makes you look like hypocrites.

So do what you’re threatening or shut up and get on with it.

Secondly, you are very much entitled to appeal Harbhajan’s suspension. The system is in place to do so and you might get a better result from the appeals process.

A three match suspension is not the maximum punishment though which, as a repeat offender, is what he really should have received. The Australians did try and let it stay on the field the first time, but when it’s a pattern of racial abuse coming from one player, are they just supposed to ignore it? That is why racism in cricket became so prevalent - nobody did anything about it.

Cop it sweet and tell him if he can’t stop using racial epithets, just shut the hell up. It’s not rocket science!

Thirdly, I agree with the rumoured stance you will be taking in the Third Test, assuming you go through with it. If the Australians are such horrific sledgers, report them. Every single time. Gentle ribbing is to be expected, but if the opposition really is referring to your player’s as bastards, why wouldn’t you report them?

The only reason I can think of is that you know full well you’re replying with much the same language, or worse. Well, it’s time for it all to stop. If your team isn’t being abusive and the other team keeps getting reported if they start in, it’ll get cleaned up right quick, won’t it?

So don’t just mutter about it. Do it! You’ll have a lot of support from a lot of quarters. A lot of fans don’t like that aspect of the game, so you’d be doing us a favour as well.

Last but by no means least, if you’re going to talk the talk, you have to walk the walk. Criticising Australia’s batsmen for not walking when they were out comes off very hollow when many times your own batsmen are not walking when they have actually been given out by the umpire. The rules are very clear in this regard - you do not have to leave your crease when you have not been given out by an umpire. But you do have to do so when you are. You don’t get to walk down the pitch to question the umpire, nor do you get to stand around for 10-20 seconds looking down the pitch in disbelief.

That is not in the spirit of cricket, either.

Oh and if you could speed up your over rate while bowling, that’d be ace.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 9th, 2008 at 5:01 pm and is filed under General, Politics.You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.