To hear the hullabaloo that the Australian media is creating about how the Australian public is going to give it back to the Indians when they tour there later his winter, it might seem that poetic justice is being meted out for a grave sin committed against the Australians.

The "monkey" story gained steam for one reason and one reason alone; This photograph came about for one reason alone; "Racism" among the Indian crowds rose its ugly head for one reason alone; and it is NOT because Symonds is a native Australian. It is because the crowd at Vadodara tried to taunt the man who was batting the best among the Australians and the man in question, Andrew Symonds, who just happens to be in the situation where he encounters racism every now and then in his own country (hey, he is not visiting Vadodara every weekend), heard or mis-heard it as "monkey" chants. Why he did that will probably remain a mystery but assuming his intentions to be honorable in making a complaint of the nature he did, there was some need for some rational thinking by the powers that be and the saner members of soceity. Of course I didn't expect any sense out of the BCCI but the members of the media who are ex-players of Australia and have toured India in the past, thus being better aware of the country and its people than others, and Cricket Australia who claims to be a very professional unit, could have together done a damn decent damage control exercise. Yes, it is very easy to shift the blame to the Australians, but I am admitting here openly that I wouldn't expect an iota of common sense from the Indian board, so if someone else doesn't do it, then it just doesn't get done, as happened in this case! The Australians aren't going to believe what Sriram Ranganathan, who might be the very guy in that picture for all they know, writes in his blog, are they?

Rudeness one can accuse the crowd of; nothing more. That was till Vadodara, but at Mumbai, one more accusation could be added to that earlier one, one of adding nuisance value to the game. The man in the photograph who has become the face of "the ugly racist Indian" is not imitating a monkey because he is racist; it is because he is showing off to his girlfriend or wife or the other pretty girls in that picture. If I have to take a guess, he has no idea about what racism actually means, but he does know that making monkey imitations at Symonds is the "in" thing after Vadodara, and that will get a few laughs out of his pals who would call him "a cool dude". That might be considered extremely stupid, but again not racist.

Once the media gets its chops into a story, they are not really going to let it go and hence the current hullabaloo. Sadly, the media has the power of influence, as can be seen in the same photograph, where it is through the media stories that the idiot in the picture has learnt of this new technique to be "the cool guy doing the monkey imitations" as he must have thought in his own foolish mind. I am sure it will be the same in Australia where a lot of people will be in the mood of "avenging their boys"; inflamed by stories they read and understood out of context in their living rooms. How can they be faulted when those story writers themselves hardly seem to have understood the context?

I think the players have the least to fear from this backlash that might originate from the Australian crowds; with the security cover they are generally provided insulating them from any possible crowd trouble - and I am sure Cricket Australia will do a much better job of controlling the crowds than the BCCI ever did or ever could - and the Australians players being the aggressive, abusive s.o.b.'s even at the best of times in addition to being damn good cricketers, the Indians would do well to let the crowd do what they do and concentrate on mixing it up with the Aussies on the field of play.

One last thing; I know we don't have these "media managers" etc in Indian cricket because we think it is a waste of time, but on the tour to Australia, can we do a one time job of doing something sensible and "pleeeaaassseee" get one to relieve the players of the "carpet bombing" the Australian media will now obviously do, and to prevent some or other of the Indian team management or officials from shooting his mouth off about something he has no idea about?