Andrew Symonds has had to watch what he says in the media while the Harbhajan Singh affair has dragged on. Now that it's over, he writes in his News Ltd column that the past month has been the most stressful period of his career.
From the initial racism row to the threats about the whole series being called off, my head hasn't stopped spinning. There have been meetings with lawyers and advisors, a day in the Adelaide courtroom, the charges downgraded by the court, fingers pointed and all of a sudden I'm somehow getting the blame. To have people questioning my integrity as a person and cricketer is pretty ordinary. Anyone who knows me understands that I'm a very straight up and down bloke, what you see is what you get, so to have people saying I'm not playing cricket in the right spirit really makes my blood boil.
Symonds says the experience has been particularly hard on his family and he is thankful to the "rock solid" Ricky Ponting for standing up for him.
I'm quite happy for the general public to make up their own minds about what did or didn't happen, but I can assure you I wouldn't take a stand against something unless I really believed in it.
