All is fair in love and war they say. If not war, this poor display of sportsmanship by the Australians can probably be attributed to love…love for the record of highest consecutive wins!
This isn’t the kind of Cricket expected from the world’s best team and definitely not the kind of Cricket we are used to watching in the Border-Gavaskar series, which has given the world some of the most hard-fought Test matches of highest quality in recent times.
That said I’m not sure to what extent the Australian players need to be blamed. Most of the players in world Cricket do appeal wrongly in the heat of the situation. And I guess the Australians were more excited this time around as they were on their way to equal the previous record of 16 consecutive wins.
And very few players in world Cricket when they have nicked the ball walk without waiting for umpire’s decision. Even some of our most senior players don’t do so.
So I don’t think the Australians can entirely be blamed for it…although I do agree they didn’t play with the right spirit and they got away with it quite easily.
By all means it is the umpires' responsibility to make sure that they don’t give in to the emotions of the players and make sure the decisions given are fair. But in this case, the decisions were anything but fair, most of them biased in favor of Australia.
Seems they were trying to rule out any possibility of an Indian win or even a draw…and looked to make sure Australia wins.
They showed height of indifference when Clark/Pointing was consulted on whether the catch was taken rather than referring it to the third umpire… Of course, the limits were already crossed when even the third umpire had erred the first day!
I think India should play the remaining matches only if the offending umpires are fired for the rest of the series. And they should present a strong case in front of the ICC to declare the match unofficial.
On the other hand, it was really heartening to see India come back so strongly and dominate the match to a good extent after such a bad performance in the first test.
The class of Laxman, the fluency of Ganguly, the maturity of Sachin and the genius of Anil Kumble… it was all so good to watch.
Indians thoroughly deserved to win this one… and by no standard did they deserve to lose!
It was extremely disappointing to see them lose… and very sad to see Kumble walk back helplessly in the end after having put in such a gallant performance with the bat.
Overall, Indians definitely showed great character. The easiest thing for them would have been to walk out of the match with all those decisions going against them. But they ignored all that and still showed a spirited display and almost saved the match…
Australians on the other hand showed poor cricketing spirit overall, and by filing a case against Harbhajan, they have proved to be poor hosts as well.
Sydney test will be remembered for all the wrong reasons, and Indian team I’m sure will be remembered as the one having played with the true spirit!
