Tunku Varadarajan, writing in the London Times, sheds some light on the reasons why the “monkey” episode in the recent match in Sydney has ignited passions in India and elsewhere:

The Indians, and, more commonly, the Pakistanis, are seen as people with fewer principles who cut corners and play footsie with the truth. Their respective societies are precisely like that, so why should their cricketers be any different? If they’re appealing for a catch - the umpires’ thinking goes - it is just to see what they can get out of the man in the white coat. It’s all rather like the first price quoted by a rug salesman at a bazaar. When the Indian slip cordon goes up in unison, screaming “Howzaaat?”, the umpire may have visions of the man trying to fleece him at a market in Jaipur: “Two thousand rupees, sir. Very good price.” Not out! The Australians’ word means something to the umpires; the Indian word means very little.

Of course, even teams such as England - cut from the same “honest” cloth as the Aussies - have found that neutral umpires can tend to favour the Aussies disproportionately when it comes to borderline decisions.

Here, there is a different dynamic at work, one that comes into play whenever the indomitable Australians play another team at cricket. Neutral umpires are impelled by the momentum generated by a seeming Australian invincibility - an invincibility that must not be disturbed.

Australian dominance is now so much a part of cricket’s natural order that umpires are lulled into believing that defeat for the Aussies is unthinkable - unnatural. So they have, subconsciously, become conservationists of the natural order (a tendency common to all enforcers of rules, in all spheres).

Also, Rahul Bhattacharya is–at last–tired of sledging.

P.S. In Outlook, Mir Ali Husain lays down the Eleven Ten Theses on Harbhajan.