Symonds vs Harbajhan: the outcome

“I hate every ape I see from chimpan-a to chimpan-zee, you’ll never make a monkey out of me.” So sang the lead character in Planet of the Apes: The Musical, as featured in The Simpsons. It seems that Mike Proctor, match referee in Sydney, along with Andrew Symonds, share similar sentiments as Proc has found Harbajhan guilty of racisim in what will surely be monikered ‘primategate’ by the press, or something else equally silly.

India have accepted the decision in very professional manner by jumping up and down, screaming until they are sick and throwing bats around before threatening to take their balls, bats and tour home with them.

We at The Googly are not privy to the hearing transcripts, but we must assume that the evidence of the spinners guilt must have been objectively verified for the referee to rule this way. Proctor is a brave man, he would have been very aware of the shit-storm a guilty verdict was going to cause for him, the ICC and the sport, but he made it anyway. He obviously felt the evidence was strong enough that Symo and his team mates were telling the truth and no-one has reason to doubt his integrity.

The BCCI have a duty to object to the decision, of course; no ruling body will accept that one of their own is a racist.

This method of dealing with citings so quickly obviously has its weaknesses, and it is a tremendous amount of pressure to place on one person to rule upon it. But, the events also illustrate that cricket is at least attempting to deal with the problem of racism unequivocally and with haste. That disgusting cancer on decency, in any walk of life, deserves such serious treatment.