Who is to blame for stale Bhajji?

The Indian team management has dealt in so much intrigue in the last couple of days that there would have been enough stuff for a mystery novel had it not been so amateurishly comical. It has ended, however, in unmitigated tragedy, with the team losing two of its leading performers for this Test. The news is that Harbhajan Singh's Australian tour is over, and that Zaheer Khan's hamstring problem is much more serious than we had been led to believe. He was ruled out of the second Test, and was replaced by Irfan Pathan, a left-arm pace bowler who is also from Baroda.

Zaheer's unavailability, without doubt, is a body blow for a team which had looked so upbeat since the second day of the Brisbane Test. For more than a year now, he has been India's strike weapon overseas, and for all their supposed vulnerability against spin, he has been the bowler to cause the Australians most worry. He is unlike most Australian bowlers - skiddy, slippery, and does more off the wicket. His absence will be a huge void to fill.

But it is Harbhjan's case that tells a story of appalling administrative failure and a lack of common intelligence from a player who has shown, in sporadic bursts, uncommon ability. That he has had a problem with his index finger has been known for a while, but what is now slowly coming to light is that the decision not to operate had been entirely his. Only a medical professional can judge with certainty the wisdom of that decision, but on the face of it it appears to have been the wrong one, and while Harbhajan must cop the blame for it, it also reflects poorly on the administration that he was allowed to take it.

Harbhajan came to Australia in July this year at the expense of the Indian cricket board, accompanied by the board-certified medical expert to seek advice and treatment for his troublesome middle finger, the one he uses ball after ball to impart spin. He had been given two choices: operation with an almost sure chance of success, or exercises which repair the damage temporarily and delay the surgery, which would have nevertheless been inevitable. Harbhajan, according to a story, allowed his fear of the knife to overwhelm him and chose the exercise route. By all accounts, the medical expert chose to be considerate to the player's concern for the moment.

Players have played with injuries before. Sachin Tendulkar decided to play throughout the World Cup with the pain of a hairline fracture in his finger, and Nathan Astle played the recent Test series against India with a knee injury - but in their cases, the injury did not impair their primary craft. A strong middle finger is vital to spinning the ball. If Harbhajan was struggling - at least figures from the beginning of this series would indicate this was true - the team management ought to have taken a more serious view of the matter. We do not immediately know whether he had underwent thorough medical tests before the tour, and if he did, what the extent of the damage found was.

A team is entitled to carry a marginally injured player if it is deemed absolutely essential. It is a thin line, though, and we will perhaps never know the truth because the Indian administration is so miserly with it. But the fact was that Harbhajan was telling everyone who would care to listen, only a day before the match, that it was only matter of rhythm, and that he was going to strike back - and the captain, while unsparing of Harbhajan's poor performance, didn't utter a word about his injury. This smacks either of complete ignorance, which is hard to stomach, or naivety.

We are not yet aware if the selectors were privy to Harbhjan's condition - it would be scandalous if they weren't - but the question needs to be asked why, even if carrying Harbhajan was a necessity, cover wasn't provided for him. Instead of joining the tour a day before a Test match, Murali Kartik should have been in the original party.

Of course, it is not the Indian way to be transparent. Kartik's arrival here was cloaked in such secrecy that you would have thought he was some newly developed nuclear missile that the Indians planned to unleash on the Australians on the day of the match. There was no word from the selectors back home or at the pre-match press conference, and not a soul to receive him at the hotel when he arrived after a 14-hour flight. If it wasn't so sad, it would have been funny.