By Neena Bhandari, IANS
Sydney : Australian all-rounder Andrew Symonds has discarded claims that he had sparked the racism row with Harbhajan Singh during the Sydney Test in an article published in The Sunday Telegraph.
Symonds wrote: “I’m quite happy for the general public to make up their own minds about what did or didn’t happen, but I can assure you I wouldn’t take a stand against something unless I really believed in it.”
“To have people questioning my integrity as a person and cricketer is pretty ordinary… I’m a very straight up and down bloke, what you see is what you get, so to have people saying I’m not playing cricket in the right spirit really makes my blood boil,” he wrote in his diary in the newspaper.
Saying that it has been the most stressful period of his career, Symonds talked of the toll the last four weeks have taken on him. “From the initial racism row to the threats about the whole series being called off, my head hasn’t stopped spinning… It’s been a rough ride and it’s taken a pretty big toll on me personally, but more importantly, on my family, my girlfriend and those close to me.”
He talked of how shattered he was on hearing the outcome of the case. New Zealand judge John Hansen downgraded the racism charge against Harbhajan to one of using general obscene, offensive or insulting language and overturned the suspension and fined the latter 50 percent of his match fee.
Symonds wrote, “It’s a great series. Real shame all this other drama has overshadowed some quality cricket.”