Is BCCI selling Indian Cricket's pride?

Courtesy: Girdhar Gopal's Article
BCCI's mild response to the trashing of Ishant Sharma and Harbhajan Singh I think tells a sordid tale. The whole thing appears to be for the benefit of IPL. Hayden, Ponting and Symonds the sledgers in chief of the Australian team are all playing in the IPL. Controversy sells tickets and so it appears that they will sacrifice India's honour for selling tickets in the IPL.

Otherwise, the abuse heaped on Harbhajan and the vulnerable 19 year old Ishant should have attracted a much harder and consequential response than is currently the case. The very fact that the insulters of Indian players and of India are given pride of place in the IPL tells us that the BCCI has no shame, in its worship of mammon. Pawar and his allies in Congress are long known to play vote bank politics. Such politics is a cynical exploitation of religious diferences for gain at the ballot. The game that Pawar and Company are playing vis a vis Australia and the IPL, is no less cynical. They are getting controversial people with a contempt of India to join the IPL just to stir the pot of passions in the IPL and in India. A cynical exercise par excellence.

It would have been much better if Symonds(in my view the Darth Vader of Australian cricket), Hayden showing absolute contempt and racial superiority towards India and Ricky Ponting who is willing to do anything to win had not been bought and paid for by the IPL at exhorbitant bonuses. There are hundreds of cricketers both in in India and abroad that could have been selected in lieu of the malignant three. Cricket quality might have suffered a bit, but India would have held its head up high and the malignant three would have found that rotton behavior has consequences.