freediver
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http://news.smh.com.au/indians-still-in-sydney-tour-in-doubt/20080107-1kkd.html
The Indian cricket team has been instructed to remain in Sydney tonight as speculation mounts that the tour of Australia may be in jeopardy.
The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) instructed the team to remain at their hotel in Sydney rather than travel to Canberra for a match against an ACT side as scheduled.
"We have been instructed by BCCI to stay in Sydney until we get further instructions," team spokesman Dr M V Sridhar told journalists.
The development followed a morning of confusion as the Indian players sat on their team bus outside the hotel for two hours before returning to their rooms.
The Indians are incensed at the three-match ban handed down in the early hours of today to spin bowler Harbhajan Singh after he was found guilty of racially abusing Australia's Andrew Symonds during the explosive second Test in Sydney.
The BCCI is understood to have called an emergency meeting in Delhi and was waiting late today for delegates to fly in from other parts of India.
Relations between the teams reached crisis point last night when Indian captain Anil Kumble accused the Australians of not playing in the spirit of the game.
"Only one team was playing in the spirit of the game," Kumble said, echoing the famous remark made by Australian captain Bill Woodfull during the Bodyline series 75 years ago.
Australian captain Ricky Ponting said he believed the match had been played in an excellent spirit and Cricket Australia chief executive James Sutherland suggested today that Ponting and Kumble should get together to help mend relations.
Cricket Australia has heard no official word on an Indian complaint that Australian spinner Brad Hogg had allegedly abused one of the Indian players on the field.
The Indian team also expressed its lack of confidence in umpires Mark Benson and Steve Bucknor and requested that Bucknor be removed from the third Test in Perth due to start next week.
The Indians were on the wrong end of at least five demonstrably poor umpiring decisions during the Sydney Test.
The most blatant of them was an appeal for caught behind against Symonds when he was on 30 in the first innings.
Symonds, who freely admitted he had hit the ball and should have been out, went on to make a match turning 162 not out and was later named man-of-the match.
from crikey:
Can there have been a more hollow win in Australian sport? From day one to day five, the second Test match at the SCG was rotten to the core, tainted by appalling umpiring, bad sportsmanship, sledging and, finally, a suspension for racism.
The chain of events that led to Australia’s ‘’triumph’’ over India, starting with the howlers afforded Australian captain Ricky Ponting and Andrew Symonds on the first day, was so embarrassing, it was cringe-making.
Indeed, the Australian victory was so fortunate that it, and the team’s much-trumpeted 16-match winning streak, should forever carry a giant asterisk alongside it in the record books: (*achieved with the help of incompetent umpires and the Australian players’ own double-standards.)
Our reputation for sportsmanship and fair play has taken a battering in the process. Around the world, we are seen as overbearing bullies who happily dish it out on the field but squeal when other teams, such as India, find the gumption to give it back.
Race relations challenge country: PM
http://news.smh.com.au/race-relations-challenge-country-pm/20080126-1obr.html
Race relations between indigenous and non-indigenous Australians is one of the nation's great challenges, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said in an Australia Day message, as the word "Sorry" was written in the sky above Bondi Beach.
Mr Rudd, elected last November, has promised to say sorry to Aborigines for past injustices, reversing an 11-year policy under the previous conservative government that damaged race relations.
MLC quashes rumours of Camden race riots
http://news.smh.com.au/mlc-quashes-rumours-of-camden-race-riots/20080125-1o74.html
A Camden-based Liberal Party member says the media is to blame for beating up news of an Australia Day race riot in Sydney's southwest.
Earlier this month The Daily Telegraph online reported the Australia First Party was planning to distribute anti-Islamic material in Camden on Australia Day.
A controversial development proposal to build a 1,200-student Islamic school in Camden has drawn the ire of many locals and sparked rumours that supporters and opponents of the school will take to the streets on Saturday.
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