Anil Kumble riled by Ricky Ponting's book RICKY Ponting's highly anticipated autobiography has set off a storm in India for its mention of the "Monkeygate" scandal despite the fact most of his criticism is levelled squarely at Cricket Australia. Anil Kumble, who was India captain at the time Harbhajan Singh was accused of racially abusing Andrew Symonds, has criticised Ponting for raising the incident in his book, but promised to give his own account soon. A lot of things have been said since then. It's five years since that incident had happened," Kumble said. I don't want to comment on that now. It's important to move on. All of us have moved on. If you really want to know what happened, you have to wait for my book. Ponting's autobiography At the Close of Play will be released in India next month and a Hindi version is due next year. Indians are upset that Ponting referred to Sachin Tendulkar's role in having Harbhajan cleared of the racial vilification charge, writing that he "couldn't understand" why the batsman said he heard the exchange at the second hearing conducted by Justice Hansen, but not the first, heard before match referee Mike Procter, that found Harbhajan guilty. Ponting's greatest grievance with the episode was the lack of support the players received from Cricket Australia during what he calls "one of the low points of my cricket career." The former captain claims board chairman Creagh O'Connor and chief executive James Sutherland had pushed for the players to agree to lessen the charge and agree that Harbhajan's words were offensive but not racist (a level 3 charge). Symmo and I didn't understand why we had do that, so the discussion went round in circles for hours. There was a fear that things would escalate, and a split in world cricket wasn't out of the question. James Sutherland and Creagh O'Connor had informally been told that Harbhajan would accept a 'lesser' charge," he writes. 'If Symmo and I do decide to go ahead with a level 3 charge, will we have the support of Cricket Australia?' The chairman said he'd have to speak to his board in the morning. That was where we left it, well after midnight, still in the lurch. It wasn't until the next day's lunch break that Creagh told me Cricket Australia's preference was to compromise, but if we wanted to go ahead they'd back us. I couldn't help thinking that if they were fair dinkum we would have had that support from day one. We decided, on a matter of principle, that we wanted Mike Procter's judgment to stand. Once we got into the hearing, I knew we had no chance. In the course of submissions, Cricket Australia's lawyers informed Justice Hansen Symmo now 'took the language to be offensive and seriously insulting, but did not consider it fell under the requirements of (level) 3.3'. Ponting believes the episode ended Symonds' love of playing international cricket. "In a lot of ways Symmo was gone from this moment on and it still makes me angry," he said. Harbhajan was cleared of the racism charge. Later Ponting found himself playing with Harbhajan and Tendulkar in the IPL and said the two months changed his opinion on the players and Indian cricket culture. "Sachin and I have always had great respect for each other, and it was a huge thrill to play with him," he wrote. He was really good to be around, is an even deeper thinker of the game than I realised and his understanding of technique and strategy is why he is the greatest cricketer I ever played against. I spent hours talking with Harbhajan about our onfield rivalry, and what I found was that he was just as competitive a beast as I am, always gives 100 per cent.