What message is the BCCI sending to Team India by withdrawing their complaint against Australia?

Cricketing relations between India and Australia are tumultuous but even by that benchmark, the last two days have been positively thrilling.

First, on Wednesday, Peter Handscomb kindled the fire by taking blame for Steve Smith’s “brain-fade” of looking at the dressing room for an indication of whether to review his leg-before-wicket decision on a thrilling fourth day in Bengaluru Test.

Then the two boards got involved. Cricket Australia CEO James Sutherland described Virat Kohli’s post-match comments accusing Steve Smith of unfair play as “outrageous”. The Board of Control for Cricket in India responded a few hours later sticking by their captain and urging the International Cricket Council to take action.

But the ICC weren’t willing to take the bait and said, on the same day, that no action would be taken against either team. A furious BCCI on Thursday went on the warpath and filed an official complaint against Handscomb and Steve Smith. Initially, there did not seem to be any signs of rapprochement but Thursday night’s developments surprised everyone: The BCCI put out a statement saying they were withdrawing their complaint after the CEOs of the two boards had met. The statement basically urged both teams to forget the issues of the second Test and focus on the rest of the series.

BCCI’s flip-flops

In fact, this statement came out just hours after reports of the BCCI filing an official complaint. And the sheer timing of BCCI’s consequent back-down on many levels raises a few questions.

For one, are India’s players, including Virat Kohli and Anil Kumble, really on board with this policy of rapprochement by the BCCI? It seems surprising because from the start the entire team has been united in roundly condemning the Australians and seeking further action. Virat Kohli kicked it off with an explosive press conference where he came close to calling the Australian team “cheats”.

Ravichandran Ashwin continued it by terming the incident like an “Under-10” game. And according to an unverified report in an Australian publication, Virat Kohli and Anil Kumble were so enraged at the Indian captain’s DRS dismissal in India’s second innings that Kumble stormed into the umpires’ room for an explanation while a furious Kohli seemingly smashed a Gatorade bottle off a table.

While the veracity of the report remains questionable, one thing is clear: Kohli, Kumble and the rest of the Indian team are furious and in no mood to let bygones be bygones.

The issue needed better handling

In the beginning, the BCCI seemed like it was going along with the wishes of the team, responding to Cricket Australia’s CEO statement by firmly backing their captain and then going ahead and filing an official complaint with the ICC.

But their subsequent decision to call off the complaint, in a matter of hours, seems strange considering the pent-up anger within the Indian camp. One can only hope that the Indian team have approved of this decision because if they haven’t: it does not bode well.

Ideally the BCCI should have tried to defuse the tension and reassured the players by telling them that they had their backs. The board could have told the team to keep its focus on the field and not to worry about the incidents off the field, assuring them that they would get justice in the boardroom battles. But, instead, what’s happened since is a plain and simple cop-out.

This could affect the Indian team’s morale in the series. If they were not taken in confidence about BCCI’s decision to withdraw the complaint, they are bound to be resentful and perceive it as a lack of support from their own cricket board. For any sporting team, this is not a good mindset to be in, for a team which is in the middle of a tough series, doubly so.

Back when the entire “Monkeygate” incident happened in the Sydney Test in 2008, the positions were reversed. It was Australia who felt hard done-by because in their opinion, the aggressor Harbhajan Singh had gotten off too easily. It was a wound which festered for years. In 2010, Andrew Symonds, the key figure in the entire fracas, hit out at Cricket Australia for “being intimidated” by the BCCI. Former Australian legend Allan Border, writing in his autobiography in 2014, commented that CA had hung Symonds “out to dry” and that indirectly led to the player’s eventual decline and international retirement.

Hopefully, something similar will not happen this time for India. A series needs to be won. The focus must remain only on that.