Who is running world cricket?

How depressing that the poisonous shenanigans in Australia have upstaged the exciting series between South Africa and the West Indies that will reach a climax in Durban this weekend.

No one comes out of the Sydney mess unstained. The Aussies have behaved boorishly, pressuring the umpires unmercifully on the final day, and their celebrations were insensitive, to say the least.

The Indians, on the other hand, reacted hysterically to the defeat and the bad decisions that went against them and, secure in their status as the richest nation in world cricket, they are becoming cynical in their exercise of this power as revealed in their board's decision to suspend the tour.

The powder keg was ignited, of course, by Harbhajan Singh's three-match ban for racist abuse, allegedly calling Aussie all-rounder Andrew Symonds a monkey.

Match referee Mike Procter didn't cover himself in glory either. If the neutral umpires didn't hear Harbhajan uttering the crucial word, one has to assume that Procter went on the say-so of Symonds who reported the matter to his captain, Ricky Ponting, who then approached the umpires with the complaint.

Procter has denied that he took the word of an Australian over that of an Indian. And yet, in the absence of further elucidation, what other conclusion are we to draw? Justice must be done, but it must also be seen to be done.

When Dwayne Bravo filed a complaint against Graeme Smith for supposedly uttering a racist epithet in the fourth Test in Antigua three years ago, the case was not proved because nothing was picked up by the stump mikes or heard by the umpires. That left Bravo's accusation against Smith's denial. Result? No case to answer.

Why, then, wasn't the result the same in this case? In the absence of further information, one can sympathise with Indian outrage at the way the hearing was handled.

Poor Proccie. It appears that manure is clinging to him at present. In the past year he has been forced to handle two explosive incidents, the first being the England- Pakistan Test at the Oval last August, which resulted in England being awarded the match because their opponents refused to continue after umpire Darryl Hair had penalised them for ball tampering.

Hair was then unconstitutionally fired from the board of elite umpires, largely through Pakistan's conniving.

Umpire Steve Bucknor, who stood in that ill-starred match in Sydney, has also been shabbily treated. Initially, the ICC backed him to stand in the next Test in Perth after the Indian cricket board filed a complaint against him.

On Tuesday, they changed their minds and cravenly agreed that he be stood down.

This begs the question: who is running world cricket? The ICC or the BCCI?

CEO Malcolm Speed's statement on Tuesday indicates that his organisation has all the backbone of an earthworm.