Harbhajan, Symonds, Darwin and Lord Hanuman!

By John Cheeran
Now the Australians are fuming, including Ricky Ponting, and all other media pundits.
The point is that there was not enough evidence against Indian off spinner Harbhajan Singh as having abused Andrew Symonds racially.
It has been alleged that Harbhajan called Symonds monkey during the Sydney Test.
There is truth in the argument that the Indian cricket board’s financial clout and the BCCI’s threat to pull out the side from the forthcoming one-day triangular series in Australia played a major role in arriving at the Harbhajan verdict.
Aussies are enraged because an Indian could get away with his sharp tongue. It is also true that during Australia’s last tour to India, the local crowd abused Symonds by calling him a monkey.
According to Charles Darwin, a monkey, may be not an Australian one, is our granddad. So why is Symonds taking offence? And if at all Symonds felt offended, instead of acting a saint, he should have retaliated calling Harbhajan a double monkey.
Had he done that he could have avoided all these posturing from guys ranging from Mike Proctor to Sunil Gavaskar to Sharad Pawar.
To think of it, the Australians, the masters of the art of sledging, are taking shield behind umpires and match referee is absurd at best.
The infamous conversation that Glenn McGrath had with the West Indian batsman Ramnaresh Sarwan, referring to Brian Lara is sufficient what sorts of gentlemen are the Aussies.
Certainly, Harbhajan erred in calling Symonds a monkey. Monkeys are more civilised than Aussies.
And it saddens me a lot that none of the characters who had a role to influence the outcome of the Harbhajan trial and ban, including that great Sachin Tendulkar had the nous to tell the Kiwi arbiter Hansen that in Indian civilization monkeys are venerated with specific reference to Lord Hanuman.
May be some Aussies should build a shrine for an anonymous monkey call that happened in Sydney, in Sydney.
May be Shantaram Gregory Robertson could explain it further to the Aussies.