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.