Most of the people had missed an important point in the Sydney episode. The Match Referee who was supposed to be neutral had taken a biased stand. The Indian Team would have even taken the poor umpiring decisions in their stride, had it not been for Mr Proctor, who despite knowing the already heated situation with which the match ended, taken a biased view on Harbajan. I guess the Indian team would have even accepted Harbajan's ban (even if he had not said anything racial - but he did say something to Symonds) if Symonds had also been banned for provoking Harbajan, under the same ICC code. That would have even cooled the tempers to some extent. But Match Referee are not playing their part, by being biased. Even Proctor could have 'warned' the Umpires on the first day itself on their poor umpiring decisions which could have atleast made them little more cautious in the next 4 days. We have seen similar cases of Match Referees taking sides like Mike Deness who suspended 6 Indian players for excessive appealing in South Africa, while video footages show similar behaviour from 4 other SA players in the same match and none were punished. Same is the case of the Oval fiasco when Pak players walked out against on-field umpires decision, but Match referee(again our friend, Mike Proctor) was a mute Spectator and allowed Umpire Darell Hair to hijack the result of the match. Hence, Indian Team should have told BCCI that they would not play under Proctor rather than the umpires.
