By IANS
Melbourne : Cricket Australia (CA) Thursday expressed its disappointment because the International Cricket Council (ICC) had not presented Indian off-spinner Harbhajan Singh’s earlier record when his racial abuse conviction appeal was heard Tuesday.
“If you read the judgement, the judge said the penalty would have been different if he’d had some facts in front of him, so from that point of view it’s disappointing. I’m disappointed, CA is disappointed and it seems the judge was disappointed as well,” CA chief executive James Sutherland told reporters.
Sutherland however added that the Australian board would not appeal the decision.
“That’s unfortunate but that’s the way it is. The Indian spinner could count himself lucky he benefited from these database and human errors,” he said.
In a fresh ICC hearing Tuesday, New Zealand Judge John Hansen let off Harbhajan with a 50 percent match fee fine for verbal abuse against Australian all-rounder Andrew Symonds during the Sydney Test. Justice Hansen cleared Harbhajan of a racial abuse conviction and also pointed that it was Symonds who instigated the 27-year-old Indian spinner.
Match Referee Mike Procter had earlier banned Harbhajan for three Tests for the alleged racist slur against Symonds. The way in which the first hearing was conducted and the sentence was handed out infuriated the Indian team and the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI), who appealed for a fresh hearing and also issued a veiled threat to call off the series if Harbhajan was not cleared.
This prompted the ICC to take immediate steps and they put a stay on the ban and also appointed Justice Hansen as the appeals commissioner for the hearing.
That could still have seen Harbhajan incur a one Test ban due to his list of prior offences but Hansen was not aware of three past indiscretions until it was too late. Harbhajan and three other Indian players had been fined 75 percent of their match fees and given a suspended one Test ban for dissent following an incident in November 2001 at Port Elizabeth in South Africa.
Victoria Police and CA also warned fans to be well behaved at the Twenty20 match between Australia and India at the Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG) Friday night, but said they were unaware of rumours that inflammatory text messages were urging a mass show of disgust over the ICC’s ruling.