As avid cricket fans, we don’t think we can let the current debacle in Australia pass without comment. It’s hard not to have a sense that things have got just a tad out of hand. Let’s remember, it is just a sport (even if huge sums of money ride on it in the Indian sub continent).
To recap for those not familiar with the unfolding drama, India got beaten in a test match against Australia. A test match they would probaby have drawn if it hadn’t been for some poor umpiring, most of which went the Australian’s way. Just to spice things up, an Indian bowler called an Autralian batsman ‘a monkey’ – and got a three-match ban for racial abuse. So to even things up, the Indians have now decided to press a rival claim that an Australian player referred to two of them as ‘b******s’.
Poor umpirng – it happens. And generally it evens itself out over a match or series – both sides get poor decisions. It probably makes the case for more technology to be used to assist the umpires. We suspect this will benefit bowlers more than batsmen.
As for racial abuse, in part we’re tempted to applaud Harbajan Singh (the Indian bowler) for managing to rile the Australians over ’sledging’ (abusive backchat from fielders to batsmen). The Aussies are past masters of sledging. It’s not a pretty art form, doesn’t do anything for the game, but clearly the Aussies are happier dishing it out than getting it back. As Corporal Jones (Dad’s Army) would undoubtedly put it ‘they don’t like it up ‘em’.
The most sensible solution we can see is that the players involved and their captains meet privately, apologies, and get back to the job in hand – playing cricket. Generaly common sense and India only have a tangential relationship – and it’s even more tangential where cricket’s involved – but we can hope.
As a footnote, Monkey’s in India are regarded as sacred and gods, so calling someone a monkey could be interpreted as a compliment rather than a slur.
