Cricket's racism bogy

[Rahima]

Waleed Aly

January 9, 2008

 

NEVER in recent memory has the noble game felt so dirty. The scorecard of the Sydney Test points to one of cricket's most incredible victories, one that encapsulates why cricket purists insist the long version of the game is incomparably superior to its briefer derivatives. Yet this match's legacy will be the precise opposite. In India, it will be remembered as a symbolic landmark of every malaise in the game, and how Australia is its principal villain.

 

If you doubt this, then witness the sheer disproportionate ferocity that surrounds this match. Visit YouTube and watch the dozens of videos dedicated to its closing stages. Listen to the quite astonishingly and unprofessionally livid outburst of Indian commentator Sunil Gavaskar on a dubious, crucial umpiring decision. Then, if you're game, read the comments posted below the video. You will see plenty about Australians as liars, cheats and racists. And this after a game in which one player, who was not Australian, was charged with and convicted of a racism offence.

 

Much of the vitriol directed at Australia is unfair. To be sure, the Australians did themselves no favours this week with their excessive appealing, puerile dissent and graceless victory celebrations that ignored their defeated opponents. But while their actions lacked class, they are not offences that must plunge the game into turmoil.

 

The response of Indian players, officials, journalists and fans suggests there is more to this than poor umpiring and behaviour in one controversial Test match. All concede India got a raw deal in Sydney, but it is clear many in India suspect something more sinister. The ABC's Harsha Bhogle said as much directly on air.

 

The present outrage, therefore, has a longer gestation. In purely cricketing terms, it expresses a long-held anger at Australia's often aggressive and uncompromising approach. New Zealanders summarise this in one word: underarm. But the most recent nadir here is Steve Waugh's all-conquering team earlier this decade. Waugh's men proudly pursued what they called the "mental disintegration" of their opponents. Everyone else called it sledging: the hurling of often personal verbal abuse, particularly at batsmen, with the aim of disrupting their concentration and eroding their confidence. Most of the cricketing world considered Australia beyond the pale.

 

Ricky Ponting has worked hard to project a new image, insisting that his charges are exemplars of cricket's spirit. But the rough reputation has stuck. The apparent Indian consensus after the Sydney Test is that Australian cricketers have long been hypocrites and arrogant bullies, and many in cricket's Asian powerhouses see themselves as long-suffering victims of Australian persecution.

 

Only this explains the conspiratorial interpretation of events in Indian media. Delhi's Hindustan Times argued extraordinarily in an editorial that "the match, for all purposes, has the stink of being fixed", and that one of the umpires, Steve Bucknor, has an anti-Indian history.

 

The same paper also quoted an unnamed "senior player" who suggested that something systemic favours Australia to India's detriment. Australia, he said, is "a team that cheats and lies quite blatantly" yet "gets away with everything, every dirty tactic, every dubious call," as though this is a law of nature.

 

When Indian captain Anil Kumble accused Australia of playing dirty, in the post-match news conference, the Indian media contingent abandoned its formally neutral role and became a cheer squad, breaking into spontaneous applause.

 

But looming over much of this discontent is a suspicion that arrogance is an Australian trait informed by a barely concealed racism. So, an Australian — even an umpire — who questions whether the bowling action of Sri Lanka's Muttiah Muralitharan is legal is suspected of expressing racist tendencies. The infamous example is umpire Darrell Hair, who was the first to penalise Muralitharan for his action. It is a familiar charge. In the past when visiting sides complained of the obviously dubious decisions of Indian or Pakistani umpires — much as India is doing now — they were also accused of racism.

 

This suggests an identity politics might be at play here. In this context, cricket is more than a game, and the anger is about more than cricket. On the sub-continent especially, it is an expression of post-colonial independence: the forum in which colonial masters could be defeated — a dimension well illustrated by the Bollywood film Lagann. One detects an assertion of power and pride in repeated subcontinental demands that specified umpires (Darrell Hair, and now Steve Bucknor) be prevented from officiating their games.

 

In this context, the decision to ban Indian offspinner Harbhajan Singh for three matches on a racism charge is explosive. Reports suggest that unless the ruling is overturned on appeal, India is threatening to take its bats and balls, in the most literal sense, and go home. If this is true, it's contemptuous of cricket's formal processes, but it is informed by a deeply held sense of structural injustice.

 

Here is Australia benefiting from an anti-racism code when, on this view, they have been cricket's great racial abusers. That the case came down to the Australians' word against the Indians' only exacerbates the emotion.

 

It is a short-sighted protest in one sense. Two players have previously been suspended for racial abuse: both were white (one Australian) and both incidents arose from matches against Asian nations. India might have more to gain from a strong anti-racism code than they would lose, and they should be loath to undermine it.

 

But this whole episode is more about hindsight than foresight. Australian cricket will need to come to terms with this if the internecine politics of the international game is to avoid rupture. Australian society should understand it, too, because this anger is more social than sporting.

 

Waleed Aly is a lecturer in politics at Monash University.

[Rahima]

Big issue down under- 8 of the 10 top articles on the age website are covering it.

 

Typical Aly article above.

 

What's your take folks? Especially the Aussies and Brits who know what cricket is.

[Che -Guevara]

What's your take folks? Especially the Aussies and Brits who know what cricket is

Why assume just brits and aussies know Cricket well Rahima. Anyway, India should stop B*tching or just go home. You don't call someone a monkey and get away with it. It is no diffirent than the Eurotrash fans whose monkey chants are usually directed at African players. Indeed, Aussies are arrogant, but that's no excuse for racial slurs. And why give that treatment to the only non-white player in the squad, hindi iyo gaal caabud. The only way Aussies could be humbled is to outplay in the field, and I don't see any other team doing that anytime soon.

 

And plus side, I guess this makes the game little more interesting. Never liked the title "gentleman's game". Where is the fun in that.

[Som@li]

India should pay the fines, head home! and wait their chance!

[Rahima]

My bad Che, I just assumed that you guys would know as much about cricket as I do about American football .

 

Personally am disgusted by Australia, they play hard all the time and taunt players (sledging is what they've named it). Taunt someone enough instead of playing the game as it should be (based on skill and talent) and you’re bound to get something you dislike in return.

 

It is a gentlemen's game and so it should stay. Ponting (whilst I don’t believe he should be sacked) and his men are nothing more than cry babies.

[N.O.R.F]

^^It's part of the game. The Aussies have been doing it for years and now they cry foul!

 

The radio phone-ins have been interesting lately even over here in UAE on the sports talk show when driving home.

[Allamagan]

A sikh indian -the spin bowler- have allegedly called Andrew Symonds – the only black player on the Australian team – a monkey. The player is banned for some matches. A conspiracy or fact?

[ElPunto]

I'm not sure why you guys are coming down hard on the Australians. That Indian cricketer should be sanctioned. And if Aussies are playing dirty then they should be called on it. In no way can it excuse the racial slur of the Indian cricketer.

[Intel]

^^ exactly

 

and its not the Aussies that are ‘crying foul', asking umpires to be sacked and threatening to go home if their demands aren't met.

 

 

this is how they treated Symonds in India.

 

i'm gonna sit back and enjoy them gettin totally banged in the next 2 games :cool:

[N.O.R.F]

^^Intel, the Aussie have been doing it for the past god know how long. Only difference is no one has ever made a complaint. Remember the abuse Sajad Mahmoud and Monty got from the Aussie crowd durng the last Ashes series down under?

 

"We didn't behave like cry babies and go running to the officials every time something was said out in the middle. Australia do it constantly and more than anyone else, so how they can complain about the behaviour of other teams, I don't know."

 

Former Pakistan skipper Wasim Akram

 

"The Aussies have been sledging and abusing players with little censure for years, so there will be some sympathy towards Harbhajan for standing up to them. But in a world where racial friction can cause the death and destruction now being seen in Kenya, its use on a sports field is unacceptable, regardless of the provocation."

Daily Telegraph writer and former England player Derek Pringle

 

But your right I hope the Indians get embarrassed agan.

[xiinfaniin]

welcome Rahima!