Malcolm Speed Autobiography

By Malcolm Speed

A first-hand look at the most turbulent events to occur in the history of Australian and world cricket.
Malcolm Speed has been involved first-hand with some of the most tumultuous events in the history of cricket.He has been burned in effigy on several occasions; described in the Hindustan times as 'one of the most disliked men in India'; and nominated as 'public enemy number one' by the Sydney Morning Herald.Initially viewed as an outsider in an environment customarily run by 'cricket people', Speed's appointment in 1997 as CEO of the Australian Cricket Board occurred as the administration faced a hostile relationship and delicate negotiations with its players. From pay disputes to corruption, and player behaviour to chucking, Speed had plenty to occupy his four-year term in the job. As CEO of the International Cricket Council from 2001 to 2008, Speed oversaw the emergence of India as the game's superpower; the introduction of a new shorter form of the game, twenty20; the disastrous World Cup in the West Indies in 2007; the murder investigation surrounding the death of Pakistan coach Bob Woolmer; and the 'Monkeygate' scandal involving India and Australia in 2008.In Sticky Wicket, Speed pulls no punches as he speaks candidly about cricket - the game, the characters and the dramas - as one of its privileged custodians during his decade at the top of world cricket.With a Foreword by Richie Benaud

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers Australia
• Release date: Mar 1, 2011
• ISBN: 9780730494737

Malcolm Speed

After a three-year period of establishing his own sports management consultancy, looking after 30 different sports, Malcolm Speed was appointed the chief executive of the Australian Cricket Board in 1997. Then in 2001, he was appointed chief executive officer of the International Cricket Council, holding the role for several years before it came to an abrupt end in 2008 after a highly publicised falling out with the ICC president. He now lectures and consults from his home in Melbourne.

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PREFACE

In January 2008 I was in the final stretch — I had completed a decade in cricket as a chief executive, first as head of Australian cricket (ACB) for four years and then six and a half years at the International Cricket Council (ICC), the world governing body. I was due to retire in July.

It was a decade that had covered the most tumultuous period in the history of world cricket. The great and ancient game underwent massive change in its power base, its financial and economic imperatives, its culture and its spirit.

As CEO of Australian cricket and then world cricket, I had a ringside seat. In fact, I was often in the ring throwing a few punches — and, more often than not, connecting with air or failing to duck at the right time.

As I reflect on this decade in 2011, three years after my departure, and seek to assess my success or otherwise, I fall back to a cricket analogy. I was playing on a sticky wicket — a pitch that is in the process of drying and on which batting is awkward and hazardous, as the ball will spin, seam and bounce sharply and unpredictably.

During this period, the game was challenged by drama — corruption, chucking, technology, player behaviour, doping, terrorism, wars, politics (internal and external), Zimbabwe and the emergence of India as a cricketing superpower that was prepared to use its muscle. Cricket welcomed a new, shorter form of the game, Twenty20, and it embraced huge revenue increases from television rights and sponsorship.

As with any job, if you work in a sport long enough you see beneath its skin: you understand what makes it tick, you know when it is strong and when it is ailing, you revel in its greatness, you fight against its ugliness. You hear its heart, analyse its DNA and see changes in its character as it adapts to changes in society. On rare and privileged occasions you see deep into its soul.

At a personal level, I was burned in effigy on several occasions; described in The Hindustan Times as ‘one of the most disliked men in India’ nominated as ‘public enemy number one’ by the Sydney Morning Herald when I sought to justify the Australian Cricket Board’s (ACB’s) decision to sell the naming rights to the century-old Sheffield Shield so that it became the Pura Milk Cup; booed by a packed house at the ICC Cricket World Cup Final in Barbados in 2007; and involved on the fringes of two murder investigations. I was despatched on ‘gardening leave’ two months before I completed my seven-year term as CEO of the ICC.

Over that period I made thousands of friends and a few enemies. Fascinating characters with a multitude of motives populate cricket. Part of the attraction of my roles was to deal with interesting people on difficult issues.

This book seeks to chronicle the journey of the game from my perspective, as one of its privileged custodians during those fascinating years.

ONE

MONKEYGATE

Cricket is played at a serious level by a small number of nations — countries where the British introduced the game in the 19th century. It seeks to bring together Muslim, Hindu, Christian, Buddhist and atheist at a time when religion divides rather than unites much of the world.

The countries of the Indian sub-continent account for approximately one-fifth of the world’s population and they are passionate beyond belief about cricket. It is the most popular sport in India by a factor of about 30. It penetrates all levels of society and is a terribly important feature of the sub-continental psyche.

The major area of change revolved around India taking over the game, and much has been written about the financial clout and leverage of Indian cricket.

It is important at the outset to understand why India is so powerful.

In 2000, David Fouvy, the ACB’s General Manager of Marketing, was quite excited after meeting with ACB’s media rights advisers, Octagon. They had confirmed his suspicions that the value of TV rights in India had increased significantly as the population of the world’s second most populous nation had acquired television sets and tuned in to cricket matches involving India. ACB’s rights from selling television pictures of Australian cricket into India were about to quadruple, and each four years thereafter they quadrupled again. Playing cricket against India as often as possible became a key objective for all of the cricket playing nations.

India’s power flows from the commercial arrangements that are attached to tours by India to other countries. All sports have a formula for sharing revenue. Under the ICC model, the host country sells TV rights, sponsorship and tickets for its home series. When India tours Australia, Australia sells to the Indian broadcasters, and the value of the Indian rights now far exceeds the rights of any other country.

How much do the Indian rights mean for Australia?

My successor as CEO of Cricket Australia (CA), James Sutherland, has told me that the Indian rights are now worth between five and six times more than those of the next most valuable team, England. If, for example, the England rights are worth $20 million to Australia, the India rights are worth between $100 million and $120 million. In turn, the rights yielded by the other countries are less valuable than those yielded by England. The Indian rights underpin the economy of Australian cricket, and the same applies for every other country.

India has to do very little to exert this power. If India decides to defer a tour to Australia, Bangladesh, New Zealand, or any other country, the financial consequences of that deferral are catastrophic. The affronted country will be seeking one of the other countries as a replacement and will receive a small fraction of the media rights money that they would have received had India toured. The mantra has become ‘Don’t offend the Indians’.

Add to this a new generation of aggressive and difficult administrators in India and you have a tightrope to be walked in dealing with the new superpower of the game.

This is a new phenomenon; India’s massive TV rights, after emerging in 2000, have taken off on an upward path since then, changing the entire cricket landscape: its finances, its loyalties and its pecking order.

Australia has done well to recognise that India is the game’s unique selling point, and has emerged as the sub-continent’s closest ally. From 1980 to 2000, India and Australia rarely played each other. India did not tour Australia between 1991 and 1999 and Australia was an infrequent visitor to India.

The Sydney Test in January 2008 and its aftermath — or ‘Monkeygate’, as the media christened it — was one of the lowlights of my time at the ICC. It does, however, highlight India’s new clout and many of the issues that the game faces.

It involved one of sport and society’s last great taboos, racism, plus bad blood between top players from two of the world’s leading sides and collusion between the Boards of those two sides in attempting to circumvent the ICC Code of Conduct process.

That process had been put in place precisely to manage the conduct of players and officials but the Australia and India Boards seemed happy enough to try to ignore it when it suited their ends.

But ahead of any specifics of Monkeygate, it is important to put the events of January 2008 into context. That context involves the evolution of the ICC Code of Conduct, the lead-up to the Sydney Test itself and the quality of the umpiring in that match.

The Code of Conduct had been drafted on my watch as ICC CEO and its preparation had involved a great deal of thought, time and effort, as it would have to deal with the occasions — hopefully rare — when cricket moved off the back pages of the newspapers and onto the front pages.

Racism, along with doping, technology, chucking and ball tampering, is an emotive issue, and provokes fevered reactions from players, media and the public. One of my first tasks when I took on the ICC role in 2001 was to draft a new Code of Conduct that would deal with all these difficult issues and alert players to areas that were out of bounds.

During that drafting I paid particular attention to racism. When former South African player David Richardson joined the ICC in 2002 we revised the Code and put in an addendum that explained each of the charges in plain language and included examples of what was acceptable conduct and what was not.

It was important to do that because international cricket is not played among one group of like-minded people. It involves the major races and religions, all of them with different outlooks on life. Historically — and thankfully! — these diverse groups have coexisted on the field without serious issues, but I had seen racism cause massive problems in other sports, particularly football in Europe, where ‘monkey’ chants and gestures had been prominent, and I wanted to ensure that it did not become an overriding issue in cricket.

An ongoing issue within the game was, and continues to be, sledging. It has been around for many, many years, but the term is said to have emerged only in the 1960s. There is debate about the origins of the term, but the word is now firmly part of cricket’s lexicon. In South Africa it is called chirping.

In drafting the Code of Conduct, we sought to draw the line between good-natured banter and abusive and insulting language — this is a difficult line to find and one that moves from time to time and place to place. There were four classes of offence, moving from less to more serious. ‘Offensive or insulting language’ became a more serious issue, with an increasingly harsh penalty involving long periods of suspension, if it ‘offends, insults, humiliates, intimidates, threatens, disparages or vilifies’ another person on the basis of their ‘race, religion, gender, colour, descent or national or ethnic origin’: that is the wording of clause 3.3 of the Code.

I had used the section to charge Australian player Darren Lehmann when the umpires had failed to lay a charge against him after he shouted a racially abusive outburst within the Australia dressing room but in the hearing of Sri Lankan team officials during a One Day International (ODI) in Brisbane in 2003. Lehmann was suspended for five ODI matches, one of which carried over into the 2003 ICC Cricket World Cup.

Ahead of the Australia–India Test series of 2007–08, I reminded all the ICC umpires and referees and the Full Member Boards and their captains that all issues of racial vilification were to be reported to the umpires and to local officials. Australia’s Andrew Symonds had been abused by spectators during an ODI series in India in late 2007, which had cast a shadow over that series, and I was keen to avoid a repeat of that kind of incident. The ICC had introduced a comprehensive program to try to stamp out racist comments, and it included wide powers to identify and eject spectators. My reminder to all Boards, not just Australia and India, was because I wanted to be even-handed, and because it was an issue that no one could afford to ignore.

The Australia team of 2007–08 was one that was in transition. It had lost its champion bowlers of the past decade and more, Shane Warne and Glenn McGrath, to retirement and was perceived to be more vulnerable as a result. At the same time, India was viewed by many people, myself included, as capable of challenging Australia’s long-running stay at the top of the international tree. It had never won a series in Australia, although it had come mighty close in 2003–04 when it drew the series 1–1, and the 2007–08 tour was clearly a great chance for it to bury that particular ghost. This ensured that the series would be a high-octane one with plenty at stake.

So much for pre-series context. The First Test was in Melbourne, and Australia won it fairly comfortably, but during it India batsman Yuvraj Singh was charged with showing dissent after remaining at the crease for far too long after being dismissed. Match referee Mike Procter threw out the charge at a hearing on the basis that Yuvraj was showing disappointment at getting out rather than dissent at the decision he had received. I was at that match and was shocked by Procter’s finding.

I met him in Melbourne and pointed out the provisions of the Code, specifically drafted by Richardson to aid referees, that stated it was an offence to hang around after being dismissed, whether as a show of dissent or disappointment. Procter had forgotten about this part of the Code. This incident had been a chance to draw a line in the sand in the first match of what was almost certain to be a tense series, and to show the players of both sides that dissent would not be tolerated. The chance had been missed, the line of what was acceptable and what was not had been blurred, and with high stakes on offer, as is inevitable in a series between two leading and well-matched sides, it was hardly what was needed at that point in time.

The Sydney Test was to take that blurring of the lines to a completely different level.

Things started badly when, on day one, Andrew Symonds was reprieved by umpire Steve Bucknor, who rejected a caught behind appeal against the batsman which I think everyone in the ground — and certainly everyone watching on television — knew was out. Symonds went on to score an unbeaten 162 that helped put Australia in a winning position after it had been 6–134 at one stage.

Umpires have a terribly difficult job. It is widely agreed that their task would be easier if they could trust players to walk when they know they are out. I am also a great supporter of using technology to assist umpires.

On the same day, umpire Mark Benson gave Ricky Ponting not out when he had edged a catch and then out leg before wicket (LBW) when he had also edged the ball. What those decisions helped to do was ensure that the players lost confidence in the officials and started to appeal more and more, presumably on the basis that, given the fallibility demonstrated, the umpires would be more likely to give marginal decisions in favour of the fielding side. It all contributed to an increasingly fractious atmosphere.

By the third day India was batting and looking to get near Australia’s first innings total of 463. It had slumped to 7–345 before Sachin Tendulkar was joined by Harbhajan Singh, and although the latter has only modest pretensions with the bat, he and his more skilled partner succeeded in rattling Australia and eventually helped to take India to an impressive 532 as they added 129 for the eighth wicket.

It was during the course of this stand that Monkeygate began. Harbhajan scored four lucky runs courtesy of an edge through the slip cordon off fast bowler Brett Lee, and as he jogged through to the nonstriker’s end he gently patted Lee on the backside — the sort of gesture a player would make to an opponent to say ‘bad luck’ or ‘well bowled’. Lee certainly appeared to take it in that spirit.

However, Symonds was, it appears, not in such a playful mood. He said to Harbhajan words along the lines of — ‘You have no fucking friends here just because you are batting well. Fuck off.’ Symonds claimed that Harbhajan then swore at him and called him a big monkey.

There had been bad blood between the two of them during the previous year’s ODI series in India. It was alleged by Symonds that Harbhajan had called him a monkey on a previous occasion and there had been harsh words at that time.

On Day 3 in Sydney, it was clear that Symonds started the altercation and swore at Harbhajan without provocation. What was said in response by Harbhajan formed the crux of the issue.

Other Australian players claimed to have heard these words too, and the matter was reported to the umpires on the basis that it was a racist remark. When challenged by umpire Benson, immediately after the alleged incident, Harbhajan denied that he had called Symonds a big monkey but offered no explanation as to what had happened.

On the basis of an official complaint by Ponting, the umpires laid a formal charge against Harbhajan under the racial vilification provisions of the Code. In doing this, they were clearly following the instructions that had been given to them to stamp out any suggestion of racist conduct.

Hearings before match referees are informal affairs. The referees are not lawyers; they are former cricketers and the hearings are meant to be former cricketers dispensing discipline to current cricketers. Usually, they are straightforward meetings of the accused player or players along with their captain and team management, plus the umpires and the match referee. Justice is administered by respected referees and their decisions are accepted.

Accusing someone of racism, however, is a massive thing, as it is something that stays with that individual for the rest of his career. Reputations are on the line, so I knew it would be a difficult hearing. I was concerned that Procter would struggle to cope with the demands of such a hearing, so I offered to appoint a lawyer who would attend the hearing and assist him with any legal rulings he had to make. This had been done in previous cases where complicated issues were being dealt with by the referee. Procter willingly accepted, because he knew he was going to be in the spotlight again. He had been match referee at The Oval Test match of 2006 when Pakistan refused to play, so he was acutely conscious of how harsh that spotlight could be. After consulting with Richardson, I appointed Nigel Peters QC, a London barrister and committee member of the MCC, who was a regular spectator at Tests in Australia and who was in Sydney watching the match.

There were two issues in this case. Were the words ‘big monkey’ said? And, if they were, did they constitute racial vilification?

The hearing lasted six hours, much longer than the usual handful of minutes the average Code of Conduct hearing takes, but given the gravity of the charge, that was perhaps not surprising. It also took place immediately after a Test in which emotions had run high, especially as Australia had won the match with just minutes to spare, helped by another incorrect decision. This time it was umpire Bucknor, who gave Rahul Dravid out caught behind as India battled to save the game, despite replays showing that the ball had deflected off his pad, not his bat.

What was my role at this time? I stayed at arm’s length from the process and sought no influence on it at all. In order for that process to be perceived to be fair it had to be that way, free of external influence. Of course that did not mean to say I was not a fascinated observer!

In the hearing, both umpires said they had not heard anything that was said between Symonds and Harbhajan. However, several players who gave evidence were a lot more definite about what had happened.

Matthew Hayden claimed he had heard the words ‘big monkey’ used by Harbhajan but had not heard any of the other words said by the two players. Michael Clarke said he heard ‘something like big monkey’. Tendulkar said he did not hear the word ‘monkey’ used.

Harbhajan denied that he had used the word ‘monkey’. He said Symonds had launched an unprovoked attack on him in which he had sworn, and he had responded in kind.

The India team manager, Chetan Chauhan, a former international opening batsman himself, summed up for Harbhajan at the hearing. He argued that Harbhajan had not used the alleged words; something he said was supported by the patchy evidence of the players. On top of that, he added that the monkey in India is a god, so why would a player use the name of a god to insult another? Why would one black person be racist to another black person? That, of course, ignored the fact that numerous Indians had made monkey gestures and aimed monkey noises at Symonds during the previous year when he had played in India.

Australia’s team manager, Steve Bernard, argued that his side had never lodged a complaint like this in the history of cricket and given that absence of precedent, would not have done so without feeling entirely justified. He said this incident was different from the usual on-field sledging and banter because it involved a racial element.

Procter was faced with a difficult decision. He ruled that having heard evidence from Symonds, Hayden and Clarke that they had heard these words spoken, he was satisfied beyond reasonable doubt that the first part of the charge was proved — the words ‘big monkey’ had been uttered. He also decided that the words were used to insult or offend Symonds on the basis of his race, colour or ethnic origin, and on the basis of these findings, after hearing submissions about the penalty, he banned Harbhajan for three Test matches.

This was, however, only the start of the Monkeygate saga.

Not surprisingly, there was outrage in India. Not only had Harbhajan been found guilty after he himself had been verbally abused — the event that had started the whole episode — but there was also a view in the Indian media that Tendulkar had been disrespected. Tendulkar has almost God-like status in India, and his word is taken as gospel. The view appeared to be: ‘If Sachin has said it didn’t happen that should be enough, so why has Harbhajan been found guilty?’

Over the next few days, the outrage grew and the whole thing became an international incident. New Delhi contacted Canberra seeking an explanation. I knew it had reached the top levels of government when Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd called me to seek a progress report so that he could be well armed in his discussions with his Indian counterpart.

This does, of course, beg the question: why had it reached such high levels in the first place? Should it not be just about cricket, about sport administering itself, leaving the politicians to look after the governance of their respective countries? My answer to that is an obvious ‘yes’, but given the importance of cricket in the two countries involved, especially India, and the perception that national pride was at stake, it may have been naïve to assume that sport and politics could be kept separate in this instance.

The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) held emergency meetings and there were threats from India that the rest of the tour would be called off. The threats came from BCCI vice-presidents, Rajiv Shukla and Lalit Modi, both of whom were serial critics of anything to do with the ICC and were playing to the Indian media. Conveniently for them, neither was an ICC official and therefore not subject to the ICC Code of Conduct. The official BCCI position was that the tour would go ahead. It was clear, however, that if Harbhajan’s appeal failed, there was every chance that the Indian team would leave Australia.

That perceived threat gave the issue an added edge, if one were needed. Cricket Australia had worked very hard to establish good relations with the BCCI and its senior officials. It was very important to CA that there be no further damage to the relationship.

And while this issue was playing out there was the small matter of umpiring standards in the match, which also had to be addressed. Both Benson and Bucknor had had poor matches, in the sense that although they got the majority of decisions correct, they both got a couple of very big decisions wrong, decisions which could be said to have affected the outcome of the whole match.

Both teams were unhappy with the umpiring. I read the captains’ reports and they were damning of both officials. Benson was not scheduled to umpire in the next Test, to be played in Perth, but Bucknor was.

The Code of Conduct process was something I had no wish to get involved in. We had a process in place, I trusted it, and did not want to throw it off course. However, I could influence umpiring appointments, and I sought to do so, to take the heat out of one aspect of the ongoing issues, by deciding that Bucknor would be stood down from the next match and two new umpires would be brought in.

Much has since been written about this decision, and the general consensus is that I reacted to pressure from India to remove Bucknor. To that I can say one word: No. My rationale was simple pragmatism. In the days after the Test, I received one call from India, from former BCCI President Inderjit Singh Bindra, who asked me to stand down Bucknor in the interests of the game and relations between the two countries and the ICC. It was quite a short discussion and a very well reasoned argument. There were no threats, no histrionics, no drama and no pressure. I assured Bindra that I would think about it. I then spoke to James Sutherland and asked for CA’s view. He advised that CA did not have a view either way: if I thought it was necessary to stand him down, they could live with that. Conversely, if he umpired in Perth, they would raise no objection.

Having heard from Bindra and Sutherland, I sought further counsel from Richardson and ICC President-elect David Morgan on Bucknor’s immediate future. Richardson made the very good point that Bucknor had lost form and lost confidence. If he were to umpire in Adelaide, every decision would be under close scrutiny and the umpiring would be a distraction, an issue in itself. I weighed this up with the fall-out from the Harbhajan suspension and decided that Bucknor would be sent home. Richardson and I both spoke to him. He was not happy, but he accepted the decision and Billy Bowden was brought in to umpire the Test. If Benson had been scheduled to umpire in Perth, he would have been stood down too.

There was a degree of outrage from sections of the media when I announced the decision to replace Bucknor. Generally, however, it was seen to be a genuine attempt to defuse a very difficult situation that had arisen between two longstanding adversaries. We had doused one spot-fire, but an inferno was brewing elsewhere.

Under the Code, Harbhajan had a right of appeal and, to the surprise of no one, he exercised it, lodging an appeal within the required time. Under the Code, the ICC appoints an independent Appeals Commissioner from a list nominated by the members.

This case called for the appointment of an experienced lawyer, preferably a judge who was well able to handle contentious hearings and some analysis of the legal definition of racism. Procter had done his best, but this hearing promised to be full of lawyers — it had become an international diplomatic incident. Justice John Hansen, of the High Court of New Zealand, was appointed. He was very well qualified for the position, having been a barrister and a senior judge for many years. He was accustomed to hearing serious criminal trials and difficult commercial and civil claims. He was a cricket fan, a former club cricketer in New Zealand and Hong Kong, and was quite independent of the Board of New Zealand Cricket (NZC). It was his first appointment to an ICC Appeal. His independence from the ICC is best illustrated by the fact that I have never met him.

The ICC Appeals process is comprehensive, and had been tested in several earlier hearings. I was confident that it would stand up to the test. The charge had been laid, the referee had adjudicated and the next step was to ensure that a fair appeal hearing would follow.

At the conclusion of that process, however, all the participants emerged less than satisfied with the result.

There was a delay between the incident in Sydney and the hearing. It was held in Adelaide at the conclusion of the Fourth Test. There were good reasons for the delay, not the least of which was a further element of pragmatism on my part — I wanted to make sure the Test series was completed before the hearing just in case the Indians decided to abandon the tour.

In the meantime, the BCCI had piled on pressure to the CA Board. Not only was the current tour at risk, they said; the whole of the new relationship, painstakingly built by former CA Chairman Bob Merriman and Sutherland with their Indian counterparts, was also in serious jeopardy. Merriman had completed his term as Chairman and had been replaced by Creagh O’Connor, a businessman and company director from South Australia. O’Connor and some of the other CA Directors were keen to resolve the matter without any further ill feeling and damage to the lucrative arrangements that had been made with India.

Australia was in the process of building a partnership with India and South Africa for the Twenty20 Champions League, the TV rights for which had been sold for US$1 billion over an 8-year period. Sutherland had assiduously negotiated reciprocal arrangements that would see India visit Australia frequently over the next 10 years. All in all, it was a hugely valuable partnership, but it was extremely fragile. Harbhajan and Tendulkar had been disrespected. The whole of the relationship was at risk. This meant that the finances of Australian cricket were at risk.

The pressure mounted and CA sought a solution. The best outcome for CA would be that Harbhajan was not convicted of racial vilification but was convicted of a lesser offence and suspended or, better still, just fined. Behind-the-scenes discussions followed, with the major stumbling blocks being the players and the ICC’s process, administered in this case by Justice Hansen. The ICC was not involved in the discussions — our concern was to make sure the process was followed. Bear in mind that this was a process agreed to in advance by all ICC members, including Australia and India. Ultimately, however, the CA Directors had their way and a solution was brokered.

An agreed statement of facts signed by Harbhajan, Ponting, Symonds, Clarke, Adam Gilchrist, Hayden and Tendulkar was tendered to the judge. It is worth recounting in full:

During the 116th over on Day 3 of the Sydney Test, Harbhajan Singh made friendly contact with Brett Lee. At the end of the over while the umpires were changing ends and the field was crossing over to their new positions, Andrew Symonds approached Harbhajan Singh and told him he had no friends amongst the Australians (he admits he used the word ‘fuck’ or a derivation thereof). Singh used similar language to Symonds and neither took offence at that stage.

However the exchange caused Singh to become angry and he motioned to Symonds to come towards him. Singh then said something to Symonds. There is a dispute as to what was said. However all of the players who gave evidence at the hearing before match referee Procter of what was said between Harbhajan Singh and Andrew Symonds, namely Singh, Symonds, Hayden and Clarke, are all clearly of the view that in the circumstances Harbhajan Singh used language that was (and [was] intended by Singh to be) offensive to Andrew Symonds. Symonds took immediate offence at the language and behaviour of Singh.

After the exchange between Singh and Symonds, Clarke spoke to Umpire Benson and complained about Singh’s behaviour. Clarke then told Ponting what he had heard. Ponting went to Umpire Benson and told him he had been informed by Clarke of the use by Singh of offensive language towards Andrew Symonds. On his way back to the slips position, Ponting spoke with Singh. Sachin Tendulkar then approached Ponting and Singh and asked Ponting to allow him to manage the situation.

Ponting then went into the slips. During over 117 Hayden informed Ponting that he had heard Harbhajan Singh use offensive language towards Symonds at the conclusion of the preceding over. At the end of over 117 Ponting went off the field and told the Australian team manager (Steve Bernard) of the decision.

The observant reader will notice that something crucial is missing. There is no mention of ‘big monkey’ and no allegation of any racist comment. The comments were said to be ‘offensive’. They were not said to be ‘racist’. The agreed statement had significantly watered down the version of events that had been given previously.

Justice Hansen might have been forgiven for wondering why he was there. This was now being portrayed by both sides as a schoolyard spat rather than a racist incident. To his great credit, however, the judge was having none of it. He sought to bring an undignified incident to a dignified end and set forth to get to the bottom of what had happened, whether the two sides liked it or not. It was important for him, and for the process, to show that it could and should still be relied upon to deal with matters of this magnitude. It was also important to me to show that the process was fair and could not be ignored at a whim, when it suited Boards that had already agreed to it.

Judge Hansen was not prepared to rely on the agreed statement and required the witnesses to give evidence. In the course of that evidence, there were several revelations.

It became apparent that part of Harbhajan’s response had been in his native language, although for some reason this had not been offered as a defence at the original hearing. Symonds conceded that part of that might have been the term teri maki, and evidence was led that this was the Punjabi term for ‘motherfucker’.

A new defence had emerged. Harbhajan denied that he had called Symonds a big monkey — he claimed that he had called him ‘motherfucker’ in Punjabi.

The other Australian witnesses, Hayden and Clarke, maintained that they had heard the words ‘big monkey’. Somewhat surprisingly, they were the only words they could recall hearing in the conversation.

Tendulkar said that he had heard swearing between the two of them, initiated by Symonds. He did not hear the words ‘monkey’ or ‘big monkey’ but he heard Singh use the term ‘teri maki’. He said that this sounds like ‘monkey’ and could be misinterpreted for it. The judge noted from video analysis that Tendulkar had been within earshot and could have heard the