Decide for yourself
Read this:
“The Sunday Telegraph” painstakingly collected and collated official ICC data, which shows India having faced more sanctions than any other Test playing nation in the past 10 years.
The daily also took a jibe at former India captain Sourav Ganguly, dubbing him “the game’s undisputed problem child, being hauled over the coals by cricket’s governing body a record 12 times in his international career.”
“Overall, Indian players have been charged for 43 infringements since 1997, for offences including intimidating umpires, abusing rival players, ball tampering, time wasting and widespread dissent,” it said.
The report pointed out that of the current touring party, five Indians players — Ganguly, Sachin Tendulkar, Rahul Dravid, Virender Sehwag and Harbhajan Singh — have either been fined or suspended in the past.
And now, this is what the famous umpire of yesteryears, Dickie Bird, had to say about Indian teams: [Link]
“I have always found Indian team going back to Gavaskar, Chandrasekhar, Prasanna, Wadekar, when I umpired them, as gentlemen and I mean in all sense of the term. They all have been credit to the profession and credit to the game of cricket”
Like Navjot Singh Siddhu likes to say, ‘Statistics are like mini skirts. They show a lot but conceal the significant part”. The Australian media is dealing with numbers. Australians seem to be obsessed with statistics and rules. Because of which Ponting and the erstwhile umpire Darrell Hair did what they did. Human touch is absent in their dealings and that could sometimes work against them as it has now. Indian cricket team might not be tame anymore, but they are not certainly ‘worst-behaved’ as they would like us believe. This tour is getting murkier by the day.
Shouts