Well Ponting and the team really showed how spoilt brats should act in achieving victory - a study in bad grace if ever there was one to witness - a very public witness to the excesses of unbridled, and uncalled for, so-called enthusiam. I am more than disappointed - the whole act reeks of a priviledged class acting without caring what others (that means me and you and the rest of the watching public) may think.

India might well pull out of the tour as it could well pull out of international cricket. With 1 billion cricket crazy fans in India who needs tours - India could go it alone and buy players from around the world - their internal TV coverage alone would be worth more than the rest of the world's interest in cricket put together, added up and totalled. They don't need Australia.

Australia doesn't need spiolt brats.

Sadly, it all comes down to integrity.

To stay at the crease when you know you are out may be within the laws of cricket, but is fundamentally against the spirit of the game.

Ponting and Symonds were arrogant, insulting and plain wrong to claim that the decisions in their favour were "just part of the game".

On the contrary, their actions were "simply not cricket".

And if that phrase has lost its meaning, then five-day Test matches have become pointless too.

Oh, come on ... spoilt brats? I think we need to give this team its credit, they have equalled the highest number of consecutive wins and quite possibly will surpass it - the fact that it was equalled on day 5 with 7 balls to go - it's like scoring the winning goal in injury time, or being given a house as a gift on your wedding day! Jeepers, that's the best test I've seen, it went the distance and wasn't over and done with in 3 days like most nowadays.

As for India quitting world cricket, not a chance ... who doesn't want to compete against the best!

Move on ... it's a slow news week obviously!

Corri, I don't know about it being a slow news week.

But your advice that we "give this team its credit, they have equalled the highest number of consecutive wins" is a bit like saying to Raila Odinga that he should "give Kibaki his credit, he has after all been elected president for another term"

Yes, Australia equalled the highest number of consecutive wins, but:

"If Cricket Australia cares a fig for the tattered reputation of our national team in our national sport, it will not for a moment longer tolerate the sort of arrogant and abrasive conduct seen from the captain and his senior players over the past few days. Beyond comparison it was the ugliest performance put up by an Australian side for 20 years." Sydney Morning Herald 8th January 2008

Yes, Mwai Kibaki was re-elected as President of Kenya, but:

"...the real damage was done in Nairobi, by simply crossing out the number of votes as announced in the constituency and scribbling in a higher number. Election monitors were turned away while the tallying went on. Monitors from the European Union saw tens of thousands of votes pinched in this way" The Economist 3rd January 2008

So, go you good Aussies! And go you good Mr Kibaki! Make Australia/Kenya proud!

I don't object to the exuberance shown when the Australians won this test but I do think that Australians are often boastful winners and very bad losers. I am a proud Aussie but I think we are heading too much towards the American way of winning and in some cases we have surpassed it. Humility is a great attribute!

The real problem here is that most of the poor decisions went against India. I thought the benefit of the doubt went to the batsman which says that the umpires who hold their finger up mean there is no doubt.

Therefore the bad decisions were exactly that bad decisions.

Finger tip catches close to the ground are often doubtful and I believe the benefit of the doubt should have been given to the Indian batsman. Asking the catcher to confirm your decision by an umpire in my mind proves doubt!

Now with the added racial slur component (if it occurred) we have a huge problem. I wonder what the Aussies were saying to their opponents out on the field? Perhaps we should mike up all players and monitor the abuse that is happening.

A little humility especially when the Aussies know they got the benefit of some very doubtful decisions is what we really need.

The two involved in the racial slur allegation should shake hands and make up and promise to never abuse each other again. Simple really!

Pericles, to bring in Kenyan politics is an interesting angle ... albeit irrelevant. I don't doubt there were questionable umpire decisions, or that Australia were incredibly lucky to win - but to slate this in with vote rigging, come on!

That sportmanship should be paramount and gracious triumph is to be sought is without question. But the tension and competitive nature of this match brought about the immediate celebrations from the team.

Are they spoilt brats? I don't believe so.

Could they be better ambassadors for the sport ... sure. But as Opinionated2 said, who knows what went on the field?

Was Singh's celebrations when he got Ponting out over the top ... not for me, it adds spice.

Test cricket has become quite monotonous - even for cricket fans, so to see this level of competition is refreshing. I think India should get on with it, play the next test and aim to be as competitive in Perth, taking the game up to the Aussies and allowing cricket fans worldwide to enjoy the game.

I doubt some of the people commenting on this even follow the game.
We need to closely look at Australia's last your of India.
Simmons was vilified by sections of the crowd , Indian officials said it did not happen.
He was called a white c too it was covered up.
Simmons did the manly thing the cricket way.
He in India presented himself at the home teams dressing rooms.
Told the same player accused today, of the way he felt about the term.
He received a promise it would not happen again.
I believe it did in this test.
The umpiring was dreadful, India suffered most but not exclusively.
One of the reasons the umpiring has been so very bad is miss management by those who control umpiring.
The true reason to keep Pakistan happy we let one of the best umpires sit on the sidelines.
It is becoming increasingly clear some country's want too much say in who will umpire.
Have our posters seen this charged cricketer on the Field?
Could we not expect his Capitan to better manage his behavior?
India has charged that to except the Australian teams report is to say India's lied, and that it harms India as a nation?!
Is it not clear to say the opposite calls our team liars?
Remember in India facts and film supported Australia's claims after India flatly denied them.
Some who put the boot in to their own country men are letting petulant childlike actions of Indian Medea and some players get a free run.

Perhaps I was being a little too subtle, Corri,

>>Pericles, to bring in Kenyan politics is an interesting angle ... albeit irrelevant. I don't doubt there were questionable umpire decisions, or that Australia were incredibly lucky to win - but to slate this in with vote rigging, come on!<<

The comparison with the Kenyan election was to illustrate how a result may be tainted by the method by which it was achieved.

The problem was not, as you and Roy and Punter claim, the umpiring decisions. It was the blatant cheating associated with staying at the crease after you knew full well that you were comprehensively out.

That was the force of the Kenyan analogy, Corri.

To stay in situ when you had been clearly dismissed, as Ponting, Symonds and Kibaki did, was to reap undeserved benefits from being an outright, incorrigible, blatant and unrepentant cheat.

The sad thing is, that the age-old remedy for dealing with persistent cheats is that the others simply stop playing with them.

And if you think that the cricketing world wouldn't consider blackballing Australia for a while, then you really don't understand the depth of the problem.

W G Grace remember him? be assured some who have entered polls or commented on this matter would not know who he was.
He however stayed at the crease multiple times in one innings after clearly being bowled.
Very few walk, very few indeed, a great many are given out when it clearly was not so, Ponting was in this test, one of the last 3 wickets to fall was not out.
Australia must forever drop the rubbish , India must look at its actions clearly out of control and by far worse than anything I have seen in world cricket.

The issue is now out of hand, no last nights back down did not fix it.
The issue now is about Indian Nationalism, just maybe it always was.
It seems the point of no return is India insists the Australian team lied.
No other conclusion can be drawn.
It has come to light Indian news Medea has asked its fans to enter Australian on line polls to vote against Australia.

I've been following this storm in a teacup with some interest. It seems to me that Pericles is quite correct - if Symonds was aware that he was actually out, contrary to the umpire's decision in his favour, then he should have walked. That he didn't, and subsequently admitted his cheating publicly, I think is quite relevant to Singh's alleged racist insult.

One of the things I've always liked about cricket is that, at its best, the game epitomises the notion of sportsmanship. On the other hand, one of the things I've always disliked about it is the distinctly boofheaded "win at all costs" mentality that the Australian team in particular often brings to the game.

Belly, if you knew just a little more about cricket, you would know that the story about WG not walking is a total myth.

There has always circulated an unconfirmed story that he was bowled first ball in a charity match, but stood his ground saying that the crowd had come to see him bat, but unfortunately the same story was also told about Harry Jupp. And in the latter case, the story also appeared in Lord Harris' autobiography, which is probably enough to relegate the story to the ranks of the apocryphal.

There is plenty of evidence that he was disliked by many, and the novelist C P Snow was moved to say in his biography that "W G Grace was by no conceivable standard a good man. He was a cheat on and off the cricket field"

However, when you look more closely you will find the stories relate more to gamesmanship than refusing to walk when out.

None of this however excuses the inability of today's highly paid cricketers to recognize that part of the money they are paid is to protect the spirit of the game, not merely to notch up as many consecutive victories by whatever means they can.

In my view, they are tying a noose round the neck of Test cricket if they fail to understand this.

The thing that kills the game is the discrepancy between many umpiring decisions and the hi-tech replays that show that they were wrong.

The outcome of a game can easily depend on one or two bad decisions.

Is it any wonder that one team or the other is going to feel unfairly treated in most games?

We cannot expect the standard of umpiring to be any better. But let’s use the available technology to minimise the error factor.

Feelings of unfair treatment manifest themselves in animosity between teams and players, and can create enormous problems within the support base for the game as we are seeing in India at present.

Fix the administration of the rules of the game by utilising instant replays, snicko, etc…and stop fartarsing around with stupid allegations of racist slurs or offensive remarks, and the utterly ridiculous rigmarole of hearings, appeals, fines and suspensions, unless they are really serious matters.

If all those who played the game at the top level and all those who watched it, felt that the maximum effort was being put into making the actual game as fair as possible, then most negativity would disappear, and any that remained would be water off a duck’s back and not blown up into stupid media hype.

It is interesting that we expect our professional sportsmen and women to act differently to the rest of society.

The spirit of the game was changed with the advent of professional cricket. If I was a selector or promoter of the game I would not encourage players to walk - but to win. I believe their remuneration is actually tied to win / loss records.

This is the sad reality of professional sport - the greater the wins the more interest from the crowds. Once a team consistently wins the crowds increase ... more dollars flow, better sponsorships, higher salaries.

Cricket is a business - it needs to be appreciated as such, and holding onto ideals of sportmanship is something that we should encourage, but once you move into the realms of professional sport then the motivations, pressures and priorities (rightly or wrongly) are changed.

It appears to me that the main reason for complaint by the Indians, & our lefties, is the misuse, to their minds, of their racism rules, & laws.

These were designed to be used by the ethnics, to belt the europeans, [whites] about the head. That a team of european sportsmen should use it against the Indians, is just not cricket.

Wouldn't it be dreadful if the fact, that many of these ethnics are much more racist than any european ever was, was brought to light.

To loose such a weapon of self destruction would realy harm our left.
The fact that more evidence is proving that Global warming is just another figment of their of their imagination makes it even worse.

Its a bad time for the left.

Hasbeen old mate you have me! I am a lefty! bat with the left too dreadful and wait there is more!
I believe in global warming!
Ok must admit is is possible WG did not refuse to walk, but hundreds have.
Never thought this old lefty would say this but read yesterday and todays comments in the Australian, balanced and informative.
Read all the articles, then ask why India did not protest that very umpire when he got it wrong their way?
We need our country men to do it better, win and act, but India has gone overboard.
We each have our own views but surely dreadful umpiring is at the bottom of this?
Who among us thinks the Aussies lied about that name calling?
Surely too , please tell me I am right the charge against that brash young repeat offender was not that he is a racist?
But that he knowing it would hurt used a term he knew would be considered racist?

Well I'm going to jump right in... despite the fact that I don't know that much about the game, but here's my two cents worth ...

Sport in Australia used to embody some highly regarded social values:
perseverance, discipline, hard work, competition, success. And, you got the feeling that there was mutual respect amongst opponents.

And I do stress the word "mutual."

Can this still be said about any of today's sports?

Winning is so highly valued in American sports that the result of a contest seems to have become more important that the playing of it.
A century ago it might have been said, "It matters not who won or lost, but how you played the game."

Today, a much more appropriate slogan would appear to be, "Winning isn't everything' It's the only thing."

Australia tends to copy many things from America, let's hope this ethos of winning at all costs won't be one.

Having said that however, I do want to add - that India must abide by the rules of the game as well. And who knows what insults were hurled off the field to provoke reactions. They need to bear some of the
brunt as well. "Play Fair," does not only apply to one side...

Foxy: when you said "Sport in Australia used to embody some highly regarded social values: perseverance, discipline, hard work, competition, success."

I think it still does ... to be selected for an Australian team, especially one like men's cricket, is so difficult that only through achieving these values can you actually get there.

However, "feeling that there was mutual respect amongst opponents" is probably more optional in todays corporate world of sport.

Sport at the highest level is now more about tv ratings, gate takings, sponsorships and commercialism than possibly the sport itself. Already we have "bastardised" cricket to create the 20/20 entertainment fest, as we did with the One Day cricket in the 80's. This wasn't so much about improving the sport as improving the "sale-ability" of it.

Professional cricket is a business ... and as such demands business responsilities which are driven more by economic returns than social conscience or environmental impacts. Please don't mistake this interpretation of the game as my support for it, but it is the reality.

Just like our legal system doesn't necessarily deliver justice, just enforces the laws. Playing within the "laws" of the game as opposed to the "spirit" of the game is inevitable.

Let me say just what I truly think on this issue.
Yes Aussies do play it hard, yes verbal insults are swapped, sometimes needless sometimes over the top.
More often than not a failure to understand another culture is on display, it should stop.
The umpiring was bad, not for the first time, in tests against England and games against Australia India gained from bad decisions by the same umpire.
The history of that taunt is clear, it happened in India and was denied, yet after it was proven no we got it wrong came from India.
In fact more than twice the Indian cricket board said it never happened it was a lie.
By far the worst sins here lay with India, Australian polls are being overloaded with voters from that country.
Effigy's are being burnt in the streets yet we still find those who think anything other than a side who should have been better lead is quite wrong? read todays ,yesterdays and the day before on line Australian news paper, then research other views look for Indian pages.
This is now past cricket.
It will get worse.
See the story showing lip readers from India seeing the worse word you can use in that country being used about an Australian bats man and an umpire.
Glass house and thrown stones come to mind cricket can survive without India
money or not.

Sadly, you are right Corri, and this is precisely why Test cricket will slowly fade away and die.

>>Sport at the highest level is now more about tv ratings, gate takings, sponsorships and commercialism than possibly the sport itself.<<

The present controversy will be papered over with a few platitudes, after both teams and their management staff have been given some re-education on the lines of "you do understand who pays your wages, don't you?" Which is, as Corri points out, television.

The end result will inevitably be that the role of the umpire will be eroded further, and technology will be introduced to "eliminate" the incidence of wrong decisions.

The result may well be that fewer bad decisions are made, but somehow I doubt that it will reduce the number of complaints, given the inconclusive nature of some aspects of the replay - whether a catch has been "grounded", for example.

It will also give the fielding side licence to appeal for everything. After all, they have nothing to lose. If on the other hand the team is allowed a quota of adjudications-by-replay, as tennis players are allowed with line calls, we will still have the complaints that "if only" they had not run out of their allotment.

The game will as a result become unwatchable, begin to lose its TV audience, and slowly die.

The shorter versions of the game might however benefit greatly from more technology. It is not difficult to imagine how the marketers could make it an integral part of the "excitement", by replaying every incident on the big screen, and allowing bets to be made on the verdict.

It would be a positive boon to 20-20. The replays would be shown to the baying crowd, who would then decide the batsman's fate in the traditional manner, thumbs-up or thumbs-down.

How good would that be, bringing the drama of the Colosseum to the MCG.

And us old geezers will be left dribbling into our mugs of cocoa and quaintly muttering into our beards, "whatever happened to cricket?"

Pericles, I think we're finally on the same page! Though I do not possess a beard I certainly will lament the loss of test cricket - which I also believe is inevitable.

20/20 cricket is made for commercial television, and the introduction of technology to adjudicate only offers greater scope for ad breaks.

How do you justify a game that goes for 5 days, is watched from start to finish by only the most purist cricketing fans and quite possibly can end in a draw. Very few outside the cricket world can even fathom the idea of this form of game.

Equally, as players are offered ludicrous contracts paying greater rates in 2 - 3 hours than a five dayer - well, what choice would you make? Even the best of us have families to consider, our longer term prospects.

I had the opportunity to watch this last test (virtually) start to finish, spending a number of days at the ground glued to the action with my binoculars and headset ... loved every minute, but like the game I'll evolve and continue to watch the one dayers, even the 20 / 20 - inadvertantly accelarating the decline in the true form of the game.

One of the problems of old age is the number of memories.
It used to be a given that any cricket team visiting India was going to loose because of the bias of the Indian Umpires.
When the ICC brought in a panel of International umpires the idea was to get right away from bias and have a free and fair game of cricket.

How unfortunate that India, with its one billion cricket adherents is once more ruling the roost.

At Sydney, India, having thrown away a chance of a win, played for a draw. They failed.
As far as umpiring is concerned, you win some and you lose some.
With his head of hair and amazing agility, one of the most brilliant cricketers in the world does look a lot like a monkey.
Sikhs can be the most charming people. But some are not.
Now that cricket is no longer "just a game" lets agree to have all cricketers join Actor's Equity and get on with the show.

Come on! this grumpy old cricket fan loves test cricket.
Do me one favor please?
Just forget the dribbles from ex English cricketers in the press.
read the Australians comments.
Ask how can an Indian use that word to an umpire, not monkey another player a worse word.
And ask your self is one side lieing?
Why has it got to be the Australian side?
spoiled brats indeed!
The history, unchallengeable history of use of the word monkey as an insult by Indian crowds and the charged player, the spoilt brats , sorry Indian cover up of those story's lets play cricket, without giving in to thuggery or without India!