You say prior history has nothing to do with yet you conveniently bring up an incident involving Harbhajan and Pietersen to cast aspersions on Harbhajan's character.
Well let me be equally pragmatic and point out that Michael Clarke was involved in a well publicised run-in with Harbhajan in India. Given that, As an impartial adjudicator would you be happy accepting Clarke's testimony on face value about Harbhajan without looking for some corrobative evidence ?
No, but there was corroborative evidence - that's what Symonds and Hayden's evidence was - it corroborated Clarke's. I'm not saying there's a smoking gun there, but that's what corroborative evidence is.
So what if Clarke had a run-in with Harbhajan? It's like me saying you shouldn't believe Tendulkar because he's a convicted ball-tamperer. Unless you hear the evidence, none of us can say.
But as I said before, if you change your story a copule of times, it detreacts from, rather than enhances, your credibility in any type of hearing.
I think you're right when you say the batsman will be at a disadvantage in these situations, because of weight of numbers. But you don't just look at these things in a vacuum - I can only imagine the hearing would have involved looking at the tapes, etc.
Anyway, I guess one day it will all come out. Then again, who knows?
When is the appeal hearing anyway? If it's tonight, it will be a nice way for Gilly to spend his 1st night of retirement.