'Evidence not strong enough'

Justice John Hansen has mentioned in his judgment that Mathew Hayden and Michael Clarke insisted that they heard Harbhajan using the "monkey" word but nothing else. In fact, Clarke claimed he did not hear Andrew Symonds say anything. The judgment suggested that this could be because some of what they were hearing was not in English.

This tied in with Bhajji's and Tendulkar's testimony that the Turbanator did use swear words in his native tongue, including "teri maa ki". The judgment pointed out that, contrary to reports about Tendulkar hearing nothing, he was closest to Bhajji when the angry exchange took place - a fact that Symonds also accepted.

Hansen didn't per se accept the argument that Procter should have rejected the testimony of Symonds, Hayden and Clarke because it lacked corroboration. "The need for corroboration, independent or otherwise, is no longer a feature of the criminal law in many jurisdictions. It would be strange if such a requirement is no longer necessary in the criminal law but it applied to sporting disciplinary hearings," he wrote.


http://cricket.indiatimes.com/Evidence_not_strong_enough/articleshow/2744507.cms