Shahadat Hossain, celebrates after taking the wicket of Morne Morkel, during the 2nd-day of their first test match in Dhaka. Shahadat, who bowled at a lively pace and with tremendous control for career-best figures of 6 for 27, may have been the main man but the talking point of the day was provided by Ashraful.
New-Zealand completed a two-game series whitewash with an emphatic victory over Bangladesh in the 2nd Test at Wellington's Basin-Reserve.
Faint hopes of avoiding an innings loss were dealt a blow when Habibul Bashar was dismissed for 25 by Chris Martin.
Shakib top-scored for the Bangladesh, with an unbeaten 41 while two second-innings wickets gave him figures of seven for 100 in the match. He survived a dropped catch by Iain O'Brien as he patiently added 23 runs in 13 overs with Shahadat Hossain.
Newspaper reports seem to suggest that the umpires didn’t hear the exchange that gave rise to the charge. Channel 9 has reviewed its audio tapes and found no record of the offensive comments either.
The other possibility is that in the course of the hearing, Tendulkar, who was batting with Harbhajan at the time and who seemed to have heard part of the exchange, isn’t able to whole-heartedly exonerate Harbhajan.
However, if neither tape nor Tendulkar backs up the Australian charge, then international cricket’s in trouble. Cricket has been down this road once before.
Some years ago Rashid-Latif was accused by Adam-Gilchrist of calling him a ‘white c__t”. Australian cricketers famously leave on-field quarrels on the field.
Ponting has chosen to take Harbhajan to ‘court’. But if Ponting can’t come up with the evidence for a ‘conviction’, if his case is based on 'Symonds' word.
Players and officials will be asking for stump microphones to be left on all the time, so that allegations of this sort in the future can be settled by technology.
Faint hopes of avoiding an innings loss were dealt a blow when Habibul Bashar was dismissed for 25 by Chris Martin.
The Symonds affair and the charge of racial abuse laid against Harbhajan-Singh by Ricky-Ponting could change the way in which international cricket is regulated.
