The Indian cricket board took this strong line at a meeting this morning of top officials at BCCI president Sharad Pawar’s residence here after which the Union Minister sent a letter to ICC president Ray Mali, spelling out the two demands.

“Finally, it was decided if both these demands were not met, the tour will be called off. The BCCI stand is very clear. There was no racial comment by Harbhajan Singh,” said BCCI sources.

The top-level meeting, said BCCI sources, was a heated affair with officials pointing to the various instances of on-field misbehaviour by the Australians, including the “shoving aside of president Sharad Pawar by the Australian team” during the presentation ceremony following the Champions Trophy in India last year.

According to BCCI sources, Pawar, in his letter to Mali, stressed that “cricket is known as a gentleman’s game” and “known for fairplay”. Pawar also wanted the ban against Harbhajan to be revoked and, for now, be stayed till the appeals hearing next week.

Listing in detail the number of wrong dismissals that went against the Indians during the second Test of the high-profile four-match series, Pawar sought the removal of the two umpires for their appalling decisions in the Sydney Test that India lost by 122 runs. As per the official ICC roster, Bucknor is slated to continue for the next Test starting on January 16 at Perth while Benson is to be replaced by Pakistan’s Asad Rauf.

Apart from Pawar’s letter, the BCCI has also sent an official appeal to the ICC against the decision of match referee Mike Procter to ban Harbhajan for alleged racial abuse following a complaint from Australian skipper Ricky Ponting.

Later, Pawar told The Sydney Morning Herald: “We are giving serious thought to whether we should continue. We feel that we must take action, enough is enough. We would like to keep an extremely good relationship with the Australian board. Our relationship is extremely cordial and we would like to continue that, but this (ban on Harbhajan) is totally unacceptable.”

Pawar has also reportedly received an SMS from India’s witness during the Harbhajan hearing and star player Sachin Tendulkar, maintaining that the team should play at Perth only after the ban is revoked. According to PTI, Tendulkar wrote: “Harbhajan is innocent and I can assure you on this. In this hour of crisis, the Board should stand by him. I suggest we should play in Perth only if the ban is lifted.”

In fact, prodded by a livid Indian team, which stayed put in Sydney today instead of moving to Canberra as scheduled, the Board has also called for an emergency working committee meeting here tomorrow to discuss the “distressing happenings” in Australia.

At the meeting today, Pawar, BCCI vice-president Rajiv Shukla, former Board chief IS Bindra and Arun Jaitley also referred to a phone call one of them had received from former Pakistan Cricket Board president Shahryar Khan which added to the heat over the Australians’ behaviour.

According to BCCI sources, the former Pakistan diplomat informed them that his country had handed over to the ICC video footage of at least 25 instances of Aussie misbehaviour, but no action was taken. “There is always pressure on the umpires by the Aussies,” the sources quoted Khan as saying.