You Monkey Bastard

Stop the world. I want to get off. Watching NDTV this evening and bringing the wife up to speed with cricket's latest controversy, she responded: Has the world gone mad?

Monkey, a racist term? Bastard, a racist term? Insults the various people over the world who've suffered genuine racism through history. Segregation. Isolation. Slavery. That was racism.

Name-calling on a cricket pitch used to have another term: sledging. And while not all teams were comfortable with it or indeed good at it, 21st century cricket had come to embrace it.

Now we're discovering that there are different types of sledging. And racist sledging is not acceptable. Fair enough. Sport can indeed do without it. But let's cross over to Sydney, which is where it's all been happening (sorry Bill Lawry).

Mike Proctor, the match referee declared this past Sunday after a 10-hour hearing: "I am satisfied beyond a reasonable doubt that Harbhajan Singh directed that word at Andrew Symonds and also that he meant it to offend on the basis of Symonds' race or ethnic origin."

Excuse me, Mr Proctor, based on what evidence are you convinced beyond reasonable doubt? The word of 3 Australians against 2 Indians? Based on what is reported to have transpired at the hearing, neither umpire nor Ponting, the Australian captain, nor Tendulkar, Harbhajan's batting partner at the time heard Harbhajan use the word monkey. Neither did Gilchrist, who was also at the hearing. And most pertinently, Channel 9's stump microphones failed to pick up anything.

Rewind to the centre of where the whole incident began: "This is what happened before our confrontation," Symonds said in the Herald Sun. "Brett Lee had just sent down a delivery and Harbhajan took off down the wicket. When he was returning to his crease, he decided to hit Brett on the backside. I have no idea why he did it.

"I was standing nearby and when I saw what happened, I thought, 'Hold on, that's not on'. I'm a firm believer in sticking up for your team-mate so I stepped in and had a bit of a crack at Harbhajan, telling him exactly what I thought of his antics. He then had a shot back, which brings us to the situation we're facing."

Dear, dear. Harbhajan is the instigator it seems. He was after Lee's arse. And poor, meek Lee. Couldn't defend himself, dear boy. So chivalrous Symonds had to step in. And look what he got from Harbhajan in return.

Back to Proctor's verdict. The Indian team decide that is monkey is a racist term in Australia, then Bastard is as offensive in India (cultural thing, old chap) and that chinaman (how come that's not a "racist" term) bowler, Hogg, called our captains (Kumble - tests, and Dhoni - limited overs) bastards. So it's off to King Solomon aka Proctor to be sorted out.

See what I mean about the world going mad