April 29, 2008. The IPL management appears to be extremely serious about not allowing the controversy involving Harbhajan Singh and S Sreesanth to escalate any further. Umpire Amiesh Saheba, who was quoted in a regional newspaper as saying that Sreesanth was provoking Mumbai Indian players during the match has been sent a notice to explain his comments.
Saheba has been given 48 hours to reply to that notice and faces a two-match suspension.
Saheba, who was officiated the game, had said that Sreesanth had commented on the other players in the opposition team and the senior umpire on the field, Aleem Dar, had also been informed about the incident.
He went on to claim that the bowler was warned twice during the game. He also said that he was not asked by match referee Farokh Engineer to testify in the case.The decision of the panel concluded that the attack from Harbhajan was 'unprovoked'.

If only Harbhajan Singh had given Sri Sreesanth a firm handshake rather than a slap across the face after an Indian Premier League (IPL) match on Friday, he would have been £375,000 better off. That is how much the India off spinner will lose after being banned yesterday for the remainder of the tournament. 

A Day after the Indian Premier League (IPL)slapped a ban on spinner Harbhajan Singh for slapping Sreesanth during a match in Mohali, the South Africa cricket coach Mickey Arthur has revealed that there were 'on-filed issues' involving Bhajji and Sreesanth with the South African players.

Mickey Arthur told TIMES NOW that Sreesanth constantly abused AB de Villiers during the series and it got 'really personal'. 

Stating that a lot of South African players 'lost a lot of respect for Sreesanth and Harbhajan', arthur revealed that Harbhajan had to apologise to South African batsman Ashwell Prince, in the presence of match referee Roshan Mahanama, for abusing him during the third Test of the series in Kanpur in April this year. 

"I did think Sree crossed the line and I do think they were going to get caught at some stage because when you play with fire you gonna get burnt," said Arthur to TIMES NOW.

"Some of the things that they have done at time bothered us and some of the players did lose respect for Sreesanth."

Arthur said, "Anything can happen when there are two volatile players on the field."
Admitted that the conduct of Sreesanth and Harbhajan Singh 'went over the top at times,' but they didn't feel strongly enough to complain.

India won the Kanpur Test to end the series in a 1-1 draw after the visitors won the second Test in Ahmedabad by an innings and 90 runs. 

Harbhajan was handed a variable ban of 11 or 13 IPL matches after a hearing yesterday, which ensures that he will miss the whole tournament, regardless of what progress Mumbai Indians, his team, make. The ban, against which Harbhajan will not appeal, includes the match on Sunday that he sat out, Mumbai's ten remaining league fixtures and the semi-finals and final, if they get that far. 

Harbhajan Singh would never even have imagined in his wildest dreams that the angry slap he planted on S Sreesanth's face would make him poorer by more than two and a half crore of rupees!

The temperamental off spinner was fined 100 per cent of his match fees when he was handed out an eleven-match ban for his unprovoked assault on India teammate Sreesanth after the Mohali game between Harbhajan's Mumbai Indians and the latter's King's XI of Punjab on April 25.

The Punjab-born Harbhajan had been purchased by the Mumbai franchise team owned by Reliance Industries for a whopping $8,50,000 (approximately Rs 3.4 crore).

"There are no separate match fees for IPL matches and the players are given only allowances. The match fee is calculated on a pro-rata basis of the amount he had been bought for by his franchise owner and the number of matches he's able to play", a top Cricket Board source informed.

As per this calculation the player, termed "Turbanator" by the Aussie press, stood to lose Rs 2.671 crore - or close to Rs 25 lakh per match - for the 11 ties he would miss following the verdict by IPL match referee and former Test stumper, Farokh Engineer.

It must rank among the costliest-ever slaps in world history, and certainly a record-setting one in cricket!

The lone consolation, if it can be called so, is that the man who handed out the punishment also hailed him as the best-ever off spinner India has produced.

One wonders what legendary predecessor Erapalli Prasanna, Engineer's one-time teammate and pal, would make of this statment, not to talk of another great who's among Harbhajan's staunchest critics - Bishen Singh Bedi. 
 

Although Harbhajan and Sreesanth were on opposing teams in the match between Mumbai and Kings XI Punjab, in Mohali, on Friday, they are international team-mates and the post-match altercation has caused considerable embarrassment to the Indian cricket board, which may yet discipline either or both players under the ICC code of conduct. 

The events as recounted by Lalit Modi, the IPL chairman, sound almost farcical. The match had ended in a 66-run win for Punjab, continuing Mumbai's three-match losing streak under Harbhajan's captaincy. “The footage showed that Harbhajan went down the line, shaking hands with a few players,” Modi said. “Sreesanth was the third player that he met. Instead of shaking his hand, he actually slapped him and continued down the line, shaking hands with the other players.” Sreesanth was given a warning but not punished after video evidence showed no provocation. 
 

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