The Queenslander's labelling of the Indian off-spinner as an 'obnoxious little weed' does him no credit whatsoever. For long, Hayden's class has been restricted to the batting crease — he has earned the reputation of a flat-track bully — and his interview to a radio station in Brisbane drove home his overall lack of class and grace most emphatically.
Cricket Australia, eternally in defence of its badly-behaved employees, finally decided to step in, charging Hayden with breach of its code of behaviour and initiating a hearing by a Code of Conduct Commissioner from its panel.
Hayden was charged under Rule 9, which prohibits detrimental public comment. For all its supposed avowed desire to maintain the spirit of the game and a zero-tolerance approach to the use of abusive language, CA has hitherto remained a mute spectator as its players have put on an exhibition of the worst imaginable behaviour in a sporting arena. This time, though, Hayden has forced even CA's hand.
In the morning, even as the Indians were preparing to leave Hobart for Sydney, a television journalist, cameraman in tow, managed to get to Harbhajan. “I'm fine. I will speak to you if I have something to say,” the off-spinner told him politely. The Indian team management refrained from lodging an official complaint, with manager Dr BR Soni saying, “We've already made our stand clear in our letter to match referee Jeff Crowe. We are concentrating on the finals. Let the Aussies say whatever they want to.” Harbhajan remained remarkably unaffected by all the drama. “They are a bunch of bad boys, the world knows it,” he remarked. “They resort to these kind of things when the going gets tough. It's been going on right through this tour. I have stopped getting bothered by it. And who's Hayden, anyway?”
Adding that he had never seen anything like this in his decade-long career, the man from Jalandhar continued, “There is a bit of banter in every game but we and all other teams leave it in the ground. The worst thing about the Aussies is that they start everything and when you give it back, they start complaining. All of them, barring Brett Lee, play this game. They have been targeting me ever since I started doing well against them,” said Harbhajan, referring to his 32-wicket haul in three home Tests in 2001. “But on this tour, it has been relentless.”
Harbhajan's claims aren't baseless. Another Hayden target in his radio show interview was impressive paceman Ishant Sharma, with whom Hayden expressed a desire to get into the boxing ring. What courage, indeed! Now, how about picking someone your size, Matthew?
