Andrew Symonds' alcohol-fuelled rant should not overshadow Brendon McCullum's team-hopping exploits, which goes against the rule of one team at a time. Photo / Getty Images

Andrew Symonds' alcohol-fuelled rant should not overshadow Brendon McCullum's team-hopping exploits, which goes against the rule of one team at a time. Photo / Getty Images

If the good of cricket is at stake here then it is far easier to forgive Andrew Symonds for his little outburst, aimed at Brendon McCullum, than it is to pardon the men who claim to legitimately run the game.

Yes, yes, Symonds' "lump of ^%&$" comment is under investigation by the holier than thou authorities, who, if they cared to look for them, have more significant problems to investigate.

It's not difficult to guess what is going on with Symonds. Like many people on this planet, he has trouble putting a cork in the bottle, then his mouth.

Symonds has always appeared as a fairly decent bloke with inner demons that cause scattergun tirades and failures of duty.

Under the influence of alcohol during a radio interview, and maybe having a bad day, the Brendon McCullum subject might simply have got in his way. However, the issue itself shouldn't be wantonly filed away just because it was raised in a hopelessly inadequate manner.

McCullum was magnanimous in response to Symonds' comments, although you would wager that a man in his lucrative double-dipping position in the new world cricket order is happy to keep his head down knowing that the bank balance is mounting up.

Symonds got it wrong in both content and style, but he was also very close to the mark.

He had earlier expressed anger at New South Wales using McCullum as a hired gun in the final of the Aussie Twenty20 on the grounds of patriotism, an obsolete piece of thinking in the professional age and particularly in a game which for many years found its greatest appeal in the multi-national world of the English county championship.

The galling aspect to what is going on with McCullum relates, quite simply, to his apparent immunity to the rules that have governed every sport since the beginning of time, that you can only play for one team in a competition at a time.

So what if McCullum is the Bradman of the Bash, the new lord of a soulless kingdom, even though his career, to these eyes, is descending into one of dubious style over diminishing substance.

The situation which provoked the Symonds attack involves McCullum not only playing for the Kold Kut Klobberers or whatever his Indian team is called, but sees him also have New South Wales and perhaps even Otago in future years as backstop options should his Indian team fail to make the IPL's champions league. NSW's grounds for hiring McCullum were that their team may be depleted for the IPL series because they already have players involved with IPL sides.