Ponting throws light on Bhajji-Symmo incident in his autobiography

New Delhi: Ricky Ponting, the former Aussie skipper and batting great is done with writing his autobiography ‘At the close of play'. Ponting has revealed some facts regarding ‘Monkey' episode between Harbhajan Singh and Andrew Symonds in his book.Ponting, who lodged a complaint of racist jibe against Bhajji on behalf of his team mate Symonds became a villain in the eyes of Indians and some in Australia. The incident happened after an altercation between Harbhajan Singh and Andrew Symonds during a test match in Sydney in 2007-08 fueled negative vibes among them. For taking his revenge, Harbhajan Singh had allegedly called Andrew Symonds, ‘monkey' in an ODI at Wankhede, Mumbai, when Australian visited India for ODI series.However, in his autobiography Ricky wrote that they warned Harbhajan Singh about the consequences of what he had done and Bhajji apologized and shook hands with Symonds.On the episode, Ponting wrote, “Most noticeably during the latter three matches(the last three ODIs of that series at Vadodara, Nagpur, Mumbai), small sections of the crowd took to making monkey noises whenever Symmo walked in their direction…..after the final game, Symmo, who is part of Afro-Caribbean descent, informed us that while we were fielding, though I didn't hear myself, Harbhajan had called him a ‘monkey'.” “We knew that if any of us had chipped one of the Indians about their race they would have been filing a complaint pronto and that would be the right thing to do. The papers would have been onto the story immediately and we'd have been the bad guys… again,” Ponting writes.Adding, “However our first reaction, in contrast, was to do what we'd always done. Just let it go,”. He added that, during the dressing room discussion on the incident, Symonds said that he'll fix it and went to the Indian dressing room. When he met Harbhajan Singh in the Indian dressing room, he said that what Bhajji called him was offensive and hurtful. On hearing this, Harbhajan apologized and said that it'll never happen again and shook hands with Andrew Symonds.Ricky Ponting's autobiography has been published and out on stands in Australia for sale.