Monkey business.

Journalists should possibly stop covering the big Sydney imbroglio that led to Peter Roebuck calling for the sacking of Ponting as captain in what was the most hard hitting article I have read in the recent past and brutally honest. The funny bit was opinion polls suggesting that the Australian public was quite with the popular sentiment as in India. The other funny articles online include one by Pranav about one-tup cricket as is famous in the various terraces of various apartments in every Indian city.

The latest in what seems to be an unending discussion on what was possibly said drags Andrew Symonds poor mom into the whole discussion. I wonder what levels will journalism stoop to in this case. There even was talk in Australian papers about Indian arrogance with the ICC . The funniest part of the decision was the apparent contradiction in Mike Procters statement.

The whole thing however has put a different perspective for the Perth test. I wonder what would happen there . Will it be played in complete silence ? Or will Australia continue with their mental disintegration to have some of it dished back at them . I still remember the seminal 2001 series where the Australians first got the mental disintegration dished back at them and famously got Steven Waugh out. I can't find that particular issue of India Today but I remember how India started giving it back to Australia since then. Ofcourse the funny part according to a lot of legends has been that Australia have behaved like cry-babies and only the Indian captain and team have moved on with their heads held high. Certainly Australia are going to have to think a lot about what they want to do or show in the future. There has been a very strong statement by Anil Kumble about the spirit of the game and that has been made in such a statesmanesque fashion that everyone is thanking their stars for him being appointed captain instead of Dhoni.

Lots of people have talked about how India is using its arrogance thanks to it having the richest board . Its interesting to note that none of these folks question the US dominance in the world economy. Money does speak. This series is financially lucrative to Cricket Australia - make no mistake about that . Even if the team leaves early and India has to pay out the money , there would be no issues since the payout would happen , India would invite Pakistan over or have a tri-series with someone else in India and make up the moolah. Its high time the ICC started giving some respect to India for the amount of commerce it is bringing to this game. Otherwise how do you expect the market for this to grow ? The biggest migrants in the world today happen to be the Indians and the Chinese and this is the way that cricket will spread with the Indians playing it in different parts of the world. So the spirit of the game and all is fine but treat India with some respect. The BCCI doesn't demand it , many times the BCCI blunders in the ICC with short term commercial gains in mind but its high time the ICC, Australia and England got off their high horses because they started the game. England might be the birth of cricket, but today crickets home lies in the maidans of Bombay, the streets of Ranchi, the beaches of Madras and the bylanes of Jalpaiguri from where the next big cricketer would appear.

Finally what every Indian fan would like to see in Perth -
An Indian win comprising of :

1. A double century by one of the fab 4 whacking the famous 4 pronged attack to all corners. If it is a certain Mr. Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar it would be a repeat of 1992 .!
2. An opening dash by Viru .
3. A 5 wicket haul for Harbhajan Singh (including the wickets of Ponting, Clarke, Hayden, Symonds )
4. A century by Anil Kumble