Action station BCCI, strategising Adelaide

Early morning, at the offices of the Board of Control for Cricket in India...

Early morning, at the offices of the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) here, pullout threats still loomed large. The office resembled a battlefield from 5 am, once the re-hearing in Harbhajan Singh’s case began in Adelaide.

The who’s who of the board, with senior counsel VR Manohar in tow, had locked themselves in second-floor chamber of the BCCI office from where the argument to defend Harbhajan — via teleconference — was scheduled to begin. What seemed evident then was that should the bowler be accused of racism, a call from Mumbai was all it would take to call the team back home.

However, what came out was truce of sorts, with Harbhajan being fined 50 per cent of his match fee for hurling abuses (of the non-racial nature), but relief also with charges of racism dropped. The level of punishment was reduced from 3.3 to 2.8, and BCCI secretary Niranjan Shah was candid when he said, “the bowler has accepted he is guilty, but we are satisfied with the verdict that this has not been linked with racism.”

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The fresh evidence procured from the stump-mike — that contained uninterrupted feed of the audio-video transcript — seems to have helped the off-spinner and the BCCI more than anything else.

The 74-year-old Manohar argued that Harbhajan had been provoked by the Australian players because of which the incensed bowler hurled an abuse. “It was Symonds who was the first aggressor. This was also taken into consideration at the hearing,” said Manohar.

The stump-mike transcript, used as fresh evidence, revealed Symonds telling Harbhajan to “go to his little team-mates,” after the latter cheerfully patted bowler Brett Lee’s back, was also counted as evidence. “He was certainly provoked,” the senior lawyer said, adding, “Had the racism charges stuck, it would have reflected badly on BCCI and the nation,” said Manohar.

The transcript, as published in The Indian Express on Tuesday, describes Symonds as the player who started the episode with unnecessary chatting on the field, which later blew out of proportion.

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“How can Harbhajan know anything about Symond’s religion or caste? He just knows him as an Australian. He has accepted that he hurled an abuse (of the non-racial kind), but that was in reply, after he was provoked. There’s been a bit of an under-current between the two teams in recent times and all that was considered,” Manohar said after the judgment.

Now that Harbhajan has been fined for abusing Symonds, though not racially, BCCI is convinced that the punishment handed to the bowler is satisfactory and that the bowler will now “give more importance to his on-field conduct.”