Match Referee Mike Procter Opens Up on Infamous Monkeygate Controversy
Almost a decade after the infamous ‘Monkeygate’ controversy in the Sydney Test between Australia and India in 2007/08 rocked the cricketing world, match referee Mike Procter has broken his silence on the same, revealing what happened behind the scenes.
Some awful umpiring decisions marred the Sydney Test, most of which went against Team India and the tensions reached the boiling point when the hosts alleged that Harbhajan Singh had called Andrew Symonds a monkey. Both the teams could not bury the hatchet and the case was forwarded to the International Cricket Council (ICC) by the hosts. It eventually led to a three-match ban for the India off-spinner.
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But while not much is clear even now, Procter’s new revelations about the saga, contained in his book Caught in the Middle, Monkeygate, Politics and Other Hairy Issues; the Autobiography of Mike Procter sheds some light on one of the darkest chapters in the game.
Procter, who had imposed the ban on the Indian star, revealed his decision was very much prompted by the evidence presented by Adam Gilchrist and Matthew Hayden in which they claimed they had heard Singh’s alleged racial taunt. That the decision was taken even after both on-field umpires and fellow-batsman Sachin Tendulkar told the hearing they did not hear Singh’s alleged sledge pretty much proves how the final verdict was affected by the hosts’ biased claims.
What made the verdict look even more biased was that there was also no sound on video footage of the incident.
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Procter stated his work was made easier, as the Indian team failed to come up with enough evidence to prove Harbhajan was not guilty, as he wrote that India provided ‘absolutely nothing in terms of evidence’. Procter went on write that Cricket Australia leaned on players not to push for further action against Singh and also said the extent to which the Australian officials went to appease Indian cricket officials was ‘mind-boggling’.
“Cricket Australia had leant heavily on the players to take the racism allegation away, and instead make it a matter of abuse,” Procter wrote.
The three-Test ban for the racial abuse was overturned with Sachin Tendulkar’s statement playing a big role in it. The batting legend had claimed he heard his teammate “use a term in his native tongue “teri maa ki” which appears to be pronounced with an “n”.
Procter was later slammed by legendary batsman Sunil Gavaskar, as he accused him of favouring the white man over the brown man.
“By accepting the word of the Australian players and not the Indian players, the match referee has exposed himself to the charge of taking a decision based not on facts, but on emotion,” Gavaskar had written in a column at that time.
“Worse still, his decision has incensed millions of Indians, who are quite understandably asking why his decision should not be considered a racist one, considering the charges that were levied on Harbhajan were of a racist remark.
“Millions of Indians want to know if it was a ‘white man’ taking the ‘white man’s’ word against that of the ‘brown man.’
“Quite simply if there was no audio evidence nor did the officials hear anything then the charge did not stand,” he had added.
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