Why ?

Because as I previously said these judgments and sentences given by ICC referee's are going to be analyzed at great length by high powered barristers, attorney's and most likely some very senior judges as well.

Cricket would love to be administering itself, but unfortunately for cricket the media, vested interests of national team's and the apparent eagerness for legal heavyweights will never leave cricket alone to administer itself.

Darryl Hair, Steve Bucknor, Mark Benson and Mike Proctor currently find themselves parked on the scrapheap, cricket umpiring and referee is resembling a blood sport.

You must be joking, you really think Harbhijan didn't say anything and a third of the Australian team reacted to nothing. I can't really see Harbhijan shouting out monkey I think he's a brighter than that, yet every word of the Australian players can be heard on microphone.

From Skysports

"However, Judge Hansen has also revealed he would have imposed a stricter penalty had he been made aware of a number of previous offences Harbhajan was involved in, which were not mentioned at the appeal because of problems with the ICC database and human error."

Funny how every ball, wicket and run and statistic can be recalled in cricket but a players record of behavior seems to go missing.

By that I hope you don't mean the ICC acker.

Agreed - their employers really have looked out for their interests.

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Ern

A quote from an anonymous contracted Australian player made to a journalist

From the article Cricinfo - Australia incensed by Harbhajan reprieve

Also the following quote from the same story apparently is opposite to what is being reported about the current feeling's of the Australian players

The satisfaction was very short lived according to the expert from this story Australian players irate after board yields to pressure - Cricket - Sport

And I wonder why it was necessary to go through the farce of the appeal when according to this quote also from the Cricinfo story (1st link) sourced originally from "The Australian" (newspaper) the eventual conclusion had been worked out between the ACB and BCCI before the Adelaide test had concluded.

And then not surprisingly this highly debatable quote Blunders rescued Harbhajan, says judge - Cricket - Sport - smh.com.au

Then Frank Sinatra sang "I did it my way"

No it doesn't, it means he did not want to pursue the racial abuse charge. Perhaps that's because he received an apology or CA told him to down grade the charges, it could be they thought he could get Singh on the lesser charge or singh had already agreed to admit to the lesser charge, or any number of other reasons.

Singh has the right to sue, yes, but he'd be laughed out of court.
I understand defamation law (in NZ anyway) backwards (having be accused of it on three seperate occasions, not convicted though).
Singh can't sue him, at the time Symonds made the report he honestly believed Singh had said what he did, giving him a solid defamation defense (try nad prove he didn't think Symonds called him a monkey). Also I don't think Symonds directly approached the media anyway, so you'd have to sue whoever first told the media about the accusations and then anyone who repeated the allegations, not just Symonds.
The ICC wont bring charges against Symonds, Singh's still be found guilty of calling Symonds a monkey it's just monkey is no longer being called a racial insult (in so far as this legal case is concerned). Using your logic no player can ever make any claim that anyone ever did anything wrong anywhere in case their claim is rejected and the accusing player will be sued.

Now this can be called defamatory, you might get away with it though if A: you can prove Symonds is a liar in court (pretty tricky) or B: it's honest opinion, but then only with the proviso you're not making the claim out of malice towards Symonds (see defamation law is complicated).
We can't say Symonds is a liar because Singh was not cleared, he was found guilty of a lesser charge. It's basically the same as saying somone isnt' dead because the person who stabbed them was charged with murder but on appeal found guilty of manslaughter.

I think the judge really hit hard at Symonds and the Aussies in his final report.

Judgment of Justice John Hansen

To Symond's statement that he takes objection to friendly gestures between opponents in a test match, he said he hopes that other international players do not share Symond's views (and I think if thats really what Symonds thinks, CA should sit down with him and have a word about ethics and behavior.)

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My computer can beat me at chess.....but its no match for me at kick boxing.

They are all cases in which the ICC is one of the parties to the dispute, and in those cases, as I suggested above, the ICC clearly cannot adjudicate independently. It should be able to manage affairs between its own members just as many other professional bodies and regulators do. If it can't, it needs to take a long look at its own house. Maybe even hire a competent lawyer to run the disciplinary programme - it should not be necessary to contract this out to third parties.

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Money won't buy you friends. But it gets you a better class of enemy.
Spike Milligan

I'm already at a stage I want Malcolm Speed's scalp.

And I'm an Australian.

The ICC handling of this has made it more like a circus event rather than finding closure.

I think ICC has some serious explaining to do on how a decision taken by one of the match referees was overturned in such a way within days. The witnesses are the same. The only additional evidence was an audio piece which is mostly unclear and does not make much of a difference. There are some serious flaws in the ways in which disputes are being handled. The match referees, since they are hearing cases, should be made aware of how such things are handled. This time the judge makes it clear: the accused in supposed to be innocent until there is sufficient evidence of his crime. Proctor took a decision on basis of two Australian players who heard nothing but the m-word. How credible is that on the part of Proctor? That lacks common sense.

Also, CA needs to sit with Andrew Symonds and discuss about sportsman spirits. He just cant go about abusing players for showing friendly gestures. BCCI has also some very serious discussions to with Harbhajan. He had been left loose for a long time now. He needs to control his anger and concentrate on his bowling. Else, other players with a better conduct and better skills can fill his space.

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My computer can beat me at chess.....but its no match for me at kick boxing.

Soumya Bhattacharya has now called the whole affair "monkeygate." So now it seems that for anything that happens in the world, at any time, ever, all the journalists need to do is take a word and slap "gate" on it.