The incident of discrimination which came to light during the third cricket Test between India and Australia at Sydney will be quickly erased from memory but the problem won’t. Cricketing bodies everywhere need to sit together urgently to go to the root of the problem that leads to the kind of bitterness witnessed in Sydney. The top of the agenda should be an agreement to stop players from using provocations against adversaries in any form, be it through abusive language or aggressive body language or vulgar gestures, during the course of a match.

In football or hockey, a player found guilty of a very serious infringement of the rules of the game is ordered off the field. Not only the player but his team cannot get away with serious breach of the playing rules on the field. In cricket, no matter how serious the charge against the player, the punishment to whatever extent it might be happens only after the match. In the Harbhajan episode, Australians were upset because the serious charge of racism against Harbhajan Singh had not been upheld only because the Indian cricket board had used its financial muscle to get a diluted verdict. The disparity in the views expressed in India and Australia over the Harbhajan verdict may come to the fore again when the Australians visit India later this year, as scheduled. One of the matches they will be playing in India will in all probability be played at Mohali in Punjab, contingent from nearby Jallandhar, hometown of Harbhajan.  Bad words spoken by Australians will be in danger of reviving the Sydney memories, at least in Punjab.

Cricket is certainly a game of fluctuating fortunes and uncertainties, though there can be no doubt that for long the Australian team has looked the best in the world, But the Australians would have to be super humans to think that they would remain unbeatable for all time to come.

There are many, not just in India, who believes that the Sydney Test that India had lost could have ended differently had it not been for some remarkable inapt umpiring. It is interesting that the cricketing authorities have put a brake on intimidating tactics by fast bowlers by limiting the number of bouncers, but not enough attention has been paid to curb the now widespread practice of sledging or abusive on field exchanges by players.

Even the use of stump microphones, which can pick up the players conversation, has failed to subdue the more vocally aggressive players. It can be said that the stump mike may have prevented the Sydney fracas had Harbhajan used an English expletive, understood by the match referee who clearly took a one-sided decision at Sydney, South African Mike Proctor, and the Australians, instead of a racist word. Who knows what actually happened then and there in the heat of the most popular game in the world.