Australian cricket through dark glasses
Author: A Correspondent Date: 28 Feb 2008
So what’s it like to be a coloured player in the heat of club cricket Down Under. Read Michael Jeh, who has played for Hayden’s Valley Cricket Club in Brisbane
Michael Jeh
BRISBANE: As a dark-skinned Australian who has played senior club cricket in Brisbane for 22 years, the recent incidents involving the Australian and Indian players underscores one simple reality.
Unless the ICC steps in and legislates against this sort of behaviour, international cricketers can no longer be allowed the freedom to regulate their own standards of behaviour.
They quite clearly lack the intelligence or diplomatic acumen to be treated like grown men. Millionaires they may be but when it comes to their capacity to be good role models for our children, cricket’s culture is in danger of moral bankruptcy.
Excuse
Photo illustration/Satish Acharya
Don’t take this personally but… Sadly, it appears that Australia expects the world to believe (or endorse) our view that sledging is OK under certain circumstances but only when we can dish it out.
After 30 odd years of defending sledging as an acceptable tactic, including racial abuse, it seems odd that Australia is now gripped by a new wave of conscience.
Throughout my career, I’ve heard the usual comments like “black c***, black bastard, black monkey” — the usual inane stuff.
If challenged, the usual defence is “don’t take it so personally mate”.
Given that I was often the only black person within a 2 km radius, how was I meant to not take it personally?
Was it meant for someone else with a bionic ear? Does that make it more acceptable then?
Daft comments
Now, I’m not particularly offended by these daft comments. In fact, I couldn’t give a monkey’s (sorry Roy, don’t take it personally)! After all, they’re not personal, right? My way of coping was simple — “it only hurts if you allow yourself to be hurt”.
My defence mechanism was to simply laugh it off. Not everyone finds it that easy — this summer’s controversies prove that even the Australian team is not immune to the rubbish that they dished out for so many years in the name of ‘mental disintegration’.
It’s not always black and white. In the case of the Symonds-Harbajhan incident, if the roles were reversed and someone reported this sort of incident in club cricket, he would be widely shamed for not being man enough to cop it sweet and return fire.
Sadly, this sort of tit-for-tat just keeps going until it gets to the point where someone inevitably goes too far. Who defines “too far”? What is insulting to one person may not be the same to another.
Don’t forget, until the Symonds incident occurred, us ‘darkies’ were not meant to take these sorts of comments personally. (It’s just a bit of harmless on-field banter so “stop complaining and face up to the next ball you black bastard”).
Instigator?
Why has Symonds been revealingly silent on exactly what he said to instigate the argument? Could it possibly have been a subtle homosexual taunt (the incident was sparked when Harbajhan tapped Brett Lee on the bum when running past him)?
See what I mean? How far back do you have to go to decide who started it and which wound hurts the most?
Recent incidents
Take the most recent incidents from the last few days. As if things weren’t bad enough already, Hayden, a man renowned for crossing himself when he scores televised hundreds, decides to cross the line of wisdom and calls Harbajhan “an obnoxious little weed”. Like cricket needed that sort of comment from an elder statesman!
Symonds goes one better by claiming that all he said to Ishant Sharma was “well bowled champ”. Does anyone who really watched footage of that incident actually believe that his snarling countenance conveyed that compliment?
Honestly, to try to hide behind that sort of excuse is a form of cowardice, no different really to the earlier situation where he was criticised for baiting Harbajhan and then scrambling for the moral high ground when Harbhajan retaliated.
Speaking of cowardice, I wonder why the Australians make a point of steering clear of sledging players like Lara and Tendulkar? It makes a mockery of their argument that sledging is a natural competitive instinct that happens automatically.
All this proves is that it is a clear strategy aimed at certain players and not others. Logically, Lara and Tendulkar’s genius should invoke even more competitiveness but amazingly, the Australians manage to control themselves when bowling to these players. Perhaps ‘white line fever’ is selective in its victims?
Exposing more Australian sledging myths...
Then there’s the old chestnut (in Australian cricket): “what happens on the field stays on the field”.
Clearly Australia feels that this axiom, one that has been at the cornerstone of their defence whenever anyone else complained about on-field abuse is no longer applicable.
But what sort of defence is this anyway? Is the cricket field not a part of the world we live in? Is it different to a home, classroom or restaurant? Is there something in the City Council by-laws that allow people to verbally assault each other so long as they do it on a grassy knoll with 6 sticks arranged roughly 22 yards apart?
Perhaps Hayden’s latest offer to Sharma (to meet him in the boxing ring) is more in keeping with Australia’s message to youth. At a time when youth violence is spiralling out of control, our heroes are now promoting fisticuffs to resolve on-field battles. Just what society needs — just what this simmering feud needed to calm things down!
Hypocrisy
What of the pathetic defence offered by Hogg and Harbhajan? The best they can do is to argue that that “bastard” and “motherf*****” are not racist insults and therefore less of a crime. That’s like saying it’s OK to kill someone with a machine gun but not with a knife. It is a defence that is bankrupt of morality and logic.
The debate has seemingly moved away from deciding what is acceptable to defining what is tolerable. If we have been reduced to debating the relative merits of ‘bastard, motherf***** or monkey’, what hope is there for our kids who worship these sporting heroes?
Furthermore, what makes ethnicity, colour or race such a special category when it comes to hurtful insults? We’ve all heard the stock-standard sledges about wives, mothers and sisters and sometimes, even the so-called funny ones can cause deep hurt to some people.
The famous McGrath vs Sarwan incident is a case in point. Initially happy to play the victim who was defending his ill wife, it was only after an indignant Sarwan told the full story that a sheepish McGrath was forced to admit his role in instigating the foul-mouthed exchange (sound familiar to recent incidents?).
One way street
At least Sarwan’s retort was clever and witty, albeit in equally bad taste (pun fully intended for anyone who knows the full transcript of the exchange!!). To Australians, sledging is often a one-way street.
India’s naivety is equally stupid. Australians are used to playing these verbal games and they do it with a practiced ease that distracts them not one iota. To take the bait or try to beat them at their own game is a battle that India will lose every time.
The fact that Australia self-righteously points to India’s poor disciplinary record with the ICC merely underscores that point.
Australia casts the bait, India fall for it hook, line and sinker and get nailed for the crime. It’s a battle they’ll never win because the Aussie sporting psyche is inured to sledging. Their learning begins at birth when they get sledged by midwives!
For those who argue that sledging is all part of the game and that the Indians are game fare for the tougher Australians, it may be pertinent to point out that this behaviour may actually be construed as “cheating” in some quarters.
Law 42 explores this issue:
http://www.lords.org/laws-and-spirit/laws-of-cricket/laws/law-42-fair-and-unfair-play,68,AR.htmlPoint 18 especially draws attention to the question of whether sledging brings the game into disrepute and is therefore deemed “unfair play”. If it can be argued that recent events (by both teams) have not brought the game into disrepute, the Spirit of Cricket is indeed dead forever.
PS: For anyone who takes offence at my comments, all I can say is, “don’t take it personally mate!”
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AuthorTopic: Australian cricket through dark glasses (Read 355 times)
February 15, 2006, 07:20:54 AM