Brits introduced the rule of law in India long before they brought in cricket. But when it comes to dealing with violations of the famed ‘spirit’ of cricket, Indian authorities have somehow made a virtue of not invoking the rule of law embodied in the ICC code of conduct.
Despite the succession of gratuitous provocations from Aussies in the course of the ongoing series, Indian cricket administrators and players seem to prefer whining and playing martyrs to the cause of "gentleman's game" than seeking legal remedies available to them within the ICC framework.
Their reluctance to take recourse to the law is all the more mysterious and self-defeating given the frequency with which their opponents or umpires have thrown the book at them and built a record of breaches over the years that suggests (however undeservedly) that Indians are about the worst behaved cricketers in the world.
BCCI and team management could not get over their inhibition to lodge a complaint under the ICC code even when Matthew Hayden, in the latest instance of offence caused by Aussies, called Harbhajan Singh an "obnoxious little weed." They chose to forego the legal remedy although Hayden's verbal abuse in a radio interview very much constituted Level 1.7 offence of the ICC code, which penalizes "public criticism of, or inappropriate comment on a match-related incident."
India's failure to move ICC gave scope for Cricket Australia to conduct an internal inquiry and, after going through the motions of a three-hour hearing, let Hayden off with nothing more than a reprimand. Given the lack of pressure from India, CA did not even deem it fit to make Hayden express an apology to Harbhajan for using such offensive language.
The gravity of India's omission is evident from the fact that just before the Hayden episode, ICC had penalized Ishant Sharma by fining him 15% of his match fee for pointing Andrew Symonds towards the pavilion after bowling him. The action followed despite a finding from ICC match referee Jeff Crowe that the 19-year-old bowler might have been "provoked" by Symonds.
Had it been pro-active, India could have used that very incident to turn the tables on Aussies and exposed Symonds for what he was - a repeat offender. But since India did not lodge a complaint against Symonds for abusing Sharma in the first place, all that Crowe could do with his finding against Symonds was to cite it as a mitigating circumstance for imposing a lesser penalty on Sharma.
In his order, Crowe reiterated ICC's policy that "a zero tolerance attitude will be shown to abusive or insulting language and actions." What he left unsaid was that, in the absence of a complaint from India, Symonds' "action" was glossed over while Sharma's "reaction" was subjected to that zero tolerance attitude.
The one occasion on which India did lodge a complaint in the infamous Sydney Test, it promptly dropped the charge against Brad Hogg in an apparent attempt to put moral pressure on Australia to make a reciprocal gesture in the earlier case against Harbhajan Singh.
Incidentally, even in that racial abuse case, ICC appeals commissioner John Hansen held that Harbhajan's offence was in reaction to the aggressive manner in which Symonds objected to his friendly overture to Brett Lee. No lesson seems to have been learnt from that experience as India continues to be at the receiving end because of its peculiar attitude that invocation of the ICC Code would run contrary to the spirit of cricket.
The unstated policy of keeping away from legal remedies has been taken so far that after Sharma's indictment, the only counter that captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni could think of was to learn the "art" of sledging. It's as if India would do anything, even take to sledging, to avoid taking recourse to law.
