Mike Procter lifts lid on monkeygate saga

Mike Procter has broken his silence on the monkeygate controversy, accusing CA of ‘mind-boggling’ appeasement.

India's Harbhajan Singh and Australia's Andrew Symonds during the fractious Test match in Sydney in 2008.

Match referee Mike Procter has broken his silence on the monkeygate controversy, revealing India’s shifting defence in the case against Harbhajan Singh.

The South African says it was “mind-boggling” the lengths Cricket Australia went to after the initial hearing to appease the Indian board when one of their players had been “wronged”.

The 2007-08 tour by India was marred by ugly incidents which had started months earlier on the subcontinent when crowds had mocked Andrew Symonds with monkey gestures and taunts during a one-day series.

Harbhajan had allegedly joined the crowd during a game in Mumbai and was confronted after the match by an angry Symonds.

In the Sydney Test a number of poor umpiring decisions and claims of catches by Australians, which the Indians believed were questionable, created an ugly atmosphere.

Harbhajan was alleged to have called Symonds a monkey again while the Indian was batting. The sides had been instructed by the ICC to refer any breach of the code of conduct directly to them. Ricky Ponting immediately told Harbhajan he was in trouble and laid a complaint.

India captain Anil Kumble approached Ponting later and said it was better to sort the matter out between the two sides, but the process was already in place.

Procter was match referee and held the hearing into the incident at the end of the match.

Procter has devoted a chapter of his new book Caught in the Middle, Monkeygate, Politics and Other Hairy Issues; the Autobiography of Mike Procter to the incident and its fallout.

Procter conducted the hearing with Nigel Peters QC, a lawyer bussed in by the ICC, assisting.

The umpires and Sachin Tendulkar said they heard nothing and there was no sound on video footage. India’s team manager, Chetan Chauhan, claimed to Ponting that “the racism charge was completely made up, because as Indians it was just not possible for them to be racist”. Chauhan argued as one official had earlier, that monkeys were deities.

The manager said Harbhajan could not testify because he did not speak English.

“To say that Harbhajan didn’t speak English already bordered on the farcical,” Procter wrote.

Australia’s witnesses, Adam Gilchrist and Matthew Hayden, were adamant about what they heard. Procter says at the back of his mind he was hoping there would be “reasonable doubt” but was swayed by the fact India offered “absolutely nothing in terms of evidence”.

He found Harbhajan guilty and banned him for three matches. The Indians were outraged and staged a sit-in at their team hotel, refusing to board a bus for a tour match in Canberra.

Senior players were in touch with the BCCI and there were credible reports the side had booked a plane and were threatening to leave the country before the Perth Test.

A New Zealand judge was flown in to conduct an appeal as both boards scrambled to deal with the issue. Ponting wrote later that he and his side felt let down by Cricket Australia, which he felt was willing to abandon Symonds and concede to India’s demands. Procter writes that he learnt later that “Cricket Australia had leant heavily on the players to take the racism allegation away, and instead make it a matter of abuse”.

The sanction was overturned when Tendulkar, who previously said he had heard nothing, claimed Harbhajan had used an obscene Indian phrase that included the word “maa ki” which could be confused with monkey.

Ponting wrote in his autobiography that he was confused by Tendulkar’s shifting evidence.

“I couldn’t understand why Sachin didn’t tell this to (match referee) Mike Procter in the first place,” Ponting said.

Sir John Hansen, the lawyer who presided at the second hearing, overturned Procter’s ruling.

Harbhajan was found guilty of a lesser charge but still should have been banned for a match because of existing convictions, however an ICC lawyer informed the hearing that none existed.

Procter, who had put his career in danger by walking off the field with other players in protest against apartheid, suffered for his role in the first hearing. Sunil Gavaskar claimed the perception was he accepted the word of the white man over the brown man.

“It was a massive generalisation and went against every bit of my moral fibre,” Procter wrote.

The South African had been awarded life membership of the Cricket Club of India in the 1990s but the institution claimed after the incident that there was no record of this occurring.