Symmo should have walked in Sydney: Gilly

MELBOURNE: Adam Gilchrist has hinted in his autobiography that Andrew Symonds should have "walked" after getting a nick on way to his big hundred during the spiteful Sydney Test but contradicted himself by saying that he felt uneasy when the all-rounder admitted the umpire's error.
    
Symonds made 162 in Australia's first innings in the second Test against India which was marred by umpiring errors and racial abuse controversy and he later admitted at a press conference that he had a big nick.
    
"... the second Test was overshadowed by controversy around some bad umpiring decision. Symo, early in his innings, nicked one off Ishant Sharma. The umpire erred, neither hearing nor seeing the deflection. It drew me, because of my stance on walking. By not walking, Symo was giving ammunition to all those who accused Australia of not playing in the right spirit," Gilchrist wrote in his yet-to-be published autobiography 'True Colours'.
    
"To make matters worse, Symo made a big hundred. To make matters really worse, at his press conference Symo admitted, in a very matter-of-fact way, that he had nicked it. Like most of the team, I didn't feel easy about him being so upfront."
    
Gilchrist also admitted that umpires had erroneously not given Ricky Ponting out even as the Australian captain clearly nicked a delivery in that Test.
    
"First, Ricky nicked one down the leg side and was given not out. Then, as if to even it up, he was given out leg before wicket off Harbhajan (Singh) when he'd smashed it of the inside edge into his pad.
    
"... most cricketers believed, which was that good and bad decision even out over time, the umpire had a job to do, and you had to ride your luck," extracts of his autobiography say.

Gilchrist said "walking" was his personal choice and he did not think of imposing it to any of his teammates. That is why, he said, when he was (stand-in) captain of Australia in 2004 India tour he would not have said 'I am captain and we are all walking'.
    
"I had zero support in the team for any kind of new ethics policy on walking. Whenever the topic came up from outside I felt extremely uncomfortable in the changing room."
    
"If I had been on a crusade to change others behaviour my opportunity would have been in India in 2004 when I was captain. But there was no way I was going to say 'I am captain and we are all walking'. I just dint feel I had the right to impose it on anyone else," he wrote.
    
The retired stumping great accepted that his stance on 'walking' has made a "wedge" between him and his teammates.
    
"I spent a lot a time 'walking away' from the subject of walking because inevitably it drove a wedge between me and team mates. I felt isolated in the same way, silently accused of betraying the team. Implicitly I was made to feel selfish, as if I was walking for the sake of my own clean image, thereby making everyone else look dishonest.
    
"But I was committed to walking because, as a player, I had the ability to make the game, in a tiny little way, better when I left it than when I found it.
    
"It was safer to stick together, to have a unified approach (of the team) that rejects walking. By doing it I was breaking ranks. The fact that I walked was not a judgement on others.

Gilchrist felt that by 'walking' the number of incorrect decisions by umpires could also be reduced.
    
"Umpires do make mistakes. They are only human, and I believe that if batsman walk when they know they are out, they are taking up an opportunity to reduce the number of incorrect decisions their Umpires make," wrote the retired cricketing great whose 'walking' in 2003 World Cup semi-final had become a huge talking point.
    
Did any one choose to follow him? Gilchrist said he thought Michael Kasprowicz 'walk' in a Test but was later disappointed when the fast bowler claimed he did it thinking umpires had given him out.
    
"In one of the test Kasper (Michael Kasprowicz) got a tiny edge and walked. Kasper is truly one of the most honest and honourable cricketer I ever played with or against.
    
"But any satisfaction I might have taking in his walking was wiped out when he said that he had only walked because he thought he had seen the umpires and moving, and was kind of stumbling of anyway.
    
"I felt that Kasper had walked, in the heat of the moment but wanted to disown it afterwards. He didn't want to draw attention to himself. He had seen what it had done to me."