India should come back home: Poll

NEW DELHI: Nine out of ten Indians want their cricket heroes to abandon their controversial tour of Australia and return home, according to an opinion poll published on Tuesday.   

Off-spinner Harbhajan Singh was accused of racism towards Australia's only black player, Andrew Symonds, in the Sydney Test and subsequently banned for three matches.   

India were also upset over a number of questionable umpiring decisions and the behaviour of the Australians during the match, which the home side won by 122 runs on Sunday.   

A staggering 91 per cent of those questioned in the poll for the Hindustan Times newspaper said they wanted India to pull out of the tour immediately without waiting for the response of the International Cricket Council over an appeal by the country's cricket board to revoke Harbhajan's ban and sack umpire Steve Bucknor.   

The ICC has since announced Bucknor will be replaced by Billy Bowden for the third Test in Perth.    Most Indians believe umpires Bucknor and Mark Benson were biased against their team, with only 17 per cent stating that umpiring errors were part of the game.   

A huge 84 per cent believe Harbhajan is innocent and 78 per cent said they believe the ICC ruling was influenced by the fact that he was an Indian.   

A selected sample of 502 people were questioned in New Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata and Chennai.    A senior Indian cricket board source said on Tuesday that India's tour would continue as scheduled and a formal announcement would be made later.   

India had ordered the players not to travel to Canberra to prepare for a tour match while the row simmered.   

India trail in the four-Test Border-Gavaskar series 2-0 after defeats in Melbourne and Sydney. The third Test is slated to begin in Perth on January 16.