Say you're an Indian cricket player it would seem.

After the second test against Australia in Sydney, one of their players, Harbhajan Singh, was brought against the Board for, allegedly, calling Andrew Symonds 'a ####'. Now, I'm not going to get into the guts of this since most people on here don't really care about cricket so I'll just put up the findings in order of how they happened;

- Incident occurs during Sydney test (Singh and Tendulkar verses Ponting, Symonds and Clarke basically...3 say he said it, 2 denying it).
- Complaint made by Australian captain (Ponting) and Singh has to go to a hearing.
- Board find Singh is guilty and ban him for three tests.
- Indian team threaten boycott of tour.
- Board do a backflip and give Singh a suspended sentence and a new hearing to be carried out at a later date (January 29).
- Indian Cricket Board threaten to go home, even going so far as to have a plane on the runway.
- Indian TV broadcasters, ESPN, threaten to take the Australian Cricket Board (ACB) to court and sue them for A$60 million...which would take over ten years for the ACB to recover.
- Singh's case is downgraded from a racial slur to offensive language.
- Singh is now found guilty but since it had been downgraded he just gets fined instead (half his match fee...so about $3000).

Believe me, if that sounds a little hard to follow, you should try to follow it from my end. Ok, yes the Australians sledge, yes they have been accused of "being able to give it, but not take it", yes they can be arrogant at times...but for one team to have that much control over the sport to threaten to sue? No, the Australians certainly don't have that kind of power despite being comfortably the best team for the past decade.

The International Cricket Council (ICC) should have stepped in to put a stop to this before it escalated into the circus it is now. But they didn't, and we now have the situation where the global governing body is not in control of the game...that honour goes to the Indian Cricket Board. A dangerous precedent has now been set as players seem to be free to find out exactly where the boundary between sledging and offensive language is.

I don't care if Singh called him a #### or not (though considering that the word is bleeped out on this site does indicate to me that, in the wrong context, it can be offensive and/or racist so the argument from people on the radio about that can be chucked out right there), but the way the Indians acted went completely overboard and smacks of arrogance not even some players in the NBA or NFL could match.

Australia tour India later this year and at the first sign of abuse at a match, I'd have them on a plane the next day and sue the Indian Cricket Board for bringing the game into disrepute...after all, India have laid out the blueprint for any team to follow now so they have to expect the repercussions *shrugs*

I tell you, it's just not cricket *shakes head*