India had to chose between dishonour and war

No student of history one can ever forget Churchill’s immortal statement on the policy of appeasement in a speech to the House of Commons, where he bluntly told man of peace Neville Chamberlain that, "You were given the choice between war and dishonour. You chose dishonour, and you will have war."

Now, there are strong allegations that BCCI's money power forced the removal of Bucknor and suspension of the ban on Harbhajan.

IT IS TRUE. If Indian board was poor, and Indian team not wanted for commercial reasons in all parts of the world, this would certainly not have happened.

But then this financial clout was just used for benign purposes -- to set a wrong, right. Right.

Sydney test was a big fraud, and that rankles even today, despite all the excellent performances and some nerve wrecking drama seen between January 2 and 6. The end result was grossly unfair, as unfair as England losing to the hand of god in the 1986 football World Cup, where all Englishmen would have felt so cheated, and would love to have that match replayed even today.

But neither that result could be erased (against Argentina), not this one can be. But the ones who perpetuated this fraud on the playing and the viewing public did need to be reprimanded.

Instead, attempt was made to reprimand and ban someone whose heroics with both bat and ball, generated so much of interest. And that too against all tenets of natural justice.

So what is wrong if India used its threat of tour withdrawal and financial clout in the cricketing world to make the ICC see reason. Probably, people would have been justified in criticising BCCI had the evidence of wrongdoing were not so glaringly evident on TV Screens. The cheating was so blatant, that it became nauseating.

The very fact that the Australian media and public rallied behind the Indian team showed that the money power was never abused. It was only used to correct a wrong.

In fact, after losing a tennis match yesterday to some poor umpiring, Australian Lleyton Hewitt exclaimed that he was feeling like Indian cricketers.

Those who love cricket but never watch tennis, must know that Hewitt is a national icon in Australia!