Australia batsman Darren Lehmann has finally broken his silence on the controversy over a dressing room outburst that saw him banned for five One-Day Internationals two years ago.
Lehmann was slapped the ban, among the harshest a cricketer has ever received, for his racist remarks after being run-out in a one-dayer against Sri Lanka in January, 2003.
The left-hander now says he was "disappointed" that his national board, Cricket Australia, did not stand by him in the hour of crisis.
"I was also disappointed at the lack of support, certainly in the public arena, that I received from Cricket Australia," Lehmann wrote in his autobiography 'Worth the Wait'.
"I am not for a second asking them to condone what I did, but I thought that, as I was one of their employees, they may have been able to state somewhere during the maelstrom that was engulfing me that I was a good person with a pretty good record over 15 years.
"They never said it was totally out of character, nor that I had co-operated fully with all the relevant people associated with the investigation and hearing.
"Contrary to the findings at a later hearing, I was well and truly inside our dressing room when I yelled out those words.
"It is not something that I had said before and it certainly isn't something I have said since."
Lehmann is currently in the midst of a crisis of the on-field kind as he fights to save his place in the Test team that is playing a four-Test series in India.
The left hander has come under pressure after Michael Clarke made a century debut in the first Test.
With skipper Ricky Ponting set to return from a thumb injury in the fourth Test, it looks like Lehmann, who has just 62 runs from the two Tests, will have to make way.
