CRICKET AUSTRALIA OR CRICKET ARROGANCE

SHATTERED ARROGANCE, RIGHTEOUS VICTORY

I write this piece basking in the joy and contentment of having seen Team India put the Aussies in their place in Perth. Perth reinforces our views of what would and should have happened in Sydney. Our outrage over the running of the game in Sydney and Kumble’s calm, mature and courageous leadership qualities have stolen a march on the Australian side. Kumble managed his 600th test wicket and a remarkably historic win over an arrogant Australian side at Perth; scarcely, has any coincidence been so sweet! Team India can now derive immense strength and self-belief from a mountain of positives from Perth and hammer the Aussies at Adelaide to square the series, which I strongly believe, they will.

THE HAYDEN EXCUSE
The build-up to Perth was full of boorish hype from the Aussie Press. They projected Shaun Tait as weapon to be unleashed on languid Indians. The WACA pitch was portrayed as being a slaughterhouse for Indian batsmen. Not satisfied with this juvenile boogeyman stuff, the Aussie media in an exercise reeking of petty meanness dug up statistics pertaining to team behavior and refereeing to show that Team India have a history of bad behavior in Cricket and that the Sydney episode was to be seen in that light! But, little did they realize that behind such history were precisely those types of individuals in the administration who had not understood that the game had travelled and evolved beyond the MCC! India’s performance at Perth has smashed an ostrich egg on the face of these rabble-rousers. There were innumerable moments to savour from the Perth Test Match; but, the best one in my opinion was the way young Ishant Sharma tormented and claimed Ponting with his speed, bounce and movement. Many Australian cricketing experts and commentators suggested, post-Perth defeat, defensively; that had Hayden played the result would have different! Now reports suggest that he will be playing in Adelaide, let us see what an impact this batting weapon will have there, for their sake I hope he doesn’t do a Shaun Tait on them!!

PROCTOR
I do believe that atrocious umpiring contributed to the degeneration of the Sydney Test-Match into a farce. Even as the global cricket scene is evolving much of the cricketing administration seems mired in the days of the raj. Till date, Match Refereeing and umpiring seem to wink at the transgressions of dominant Aussies and are urgently harsh in dealing with those that have arrived in their own right on the world cricketing scene. Proctor has no problem in dealing Rashid Latif a five match ban for claiming a floored catch. But why did he not do the same to Ponting and Clark? What made Proctor, without any concrete proof of Harbhajan's alleged utterances; believe what Ponting and Company said as right. Proctor’s shocker of a statement that “as a South African he knew what racism meant as he had seen it from close quarters” seems to explain the rationale behind his illogical decision to book Harbhajan.

SCHIZOPHRENIA AND INVINCIBLE AUSSIE
Cricket Australia’s decision to be strict on on-field behavior and ban racist utterances is a laudable move but for a Nation with a history of boorish, offensive and insulting behavior towards their cricketing opponents as well as their aboriginals, this step smacks of schizophrenia rather than any great desire to improve cricketing relations or mend their arrogant Aussie image. From the video clippings it was easy to see that Harbhajan was a victim of Symond’s machinations, most certainly in collusion with Ricky Ponting. Cricket Australia has greatly benefitted from an International cricketing administration that has sustained values from colonial times in so far as umpiring and refereeing go! Shivnarain Chandrapaul, the West Indies middle order batsman, has an interesting observation on this, he suggests that umpires always favour a stronger side and if that side happens to be a bullying and belligerent one like the Aussies, then the series is over before it has begun for their opponents. Australia is undoubtedly a great cricketing side, still, India’s stand at Sydney and their victory at Perth should serve as a beacon of hope for all the other cricketing nations to look at the ‘invincibility’ of this Australian side at what it really is – just a bauble held aloft due to the contributions, in no small measure of sometimes browbeaten and at other times witless, inconsistent umpiring!

THE CONSISTENTLY ANTI-INDIAN WEST INDIAN
Every visiting team to the world's biggest island has had to suffer in anger the errors/horrors of umpiring decisions since many years now: - Rudi Koertzen and Sangakara; The mistakes committed against England in the Ashes in Australia; Benson and Bucknor versus India; and all this in an age of neutral umpiring simply supports and reinforces Chandrapaul’s views on the topic. Is there a racism issue involved in the manner in which Bucknor used to target Indian cricketers in particular with all his atrocious decisions? While Proctor’s bias can be attributed to his roots; how do we explain the Bucknor phenomenon? This dopy person who was astonishingly enough, also a FIFA referee has exhibited a strong bias against India in nearly every match that he featured in. From the headmasterly admonition that he subjected Parthiv Patel to in the India-England series; the mimicking of Rahul Dravid, to sabotaging India's thirst for victory down under; Bucknor has been our curse. As far as blacks go Uganda, South Africa, Kenya, Zanzibar provide enough evidence of political upheavals affecting people of Indian origin; the political scene in Trinidad and Tobago is sharply polarised between the influential blacks and those of Indian origin. In the West Indies there is a covert discrimination against people of Indian origin. There was even a time in West Indian cricket when players of Indian origin, immediately post-Kanhai period, were denied place in their cricketing side. There was hardly any Indian-origin player in the WI side that dominated world cricket in the seventies and eighties. So Bucknor's phenomenal consistency in derailing Indian batsmen and bowlers is not just poor/arrogant umpiring, but it has a basis in the attitudinal history of the West Indian Blacks towards the Indian West Indians.

ARROGANT UNANSWERABLE AUSTRALIAN
Arrogance and racism have always been an inherent characteristic of not just the Australian cricketing scene, but the Australian nation. Nations across the world that have indulged in racism, discrimination have been made to answer for their transgressions and expiate for their sins against humanity. The Germans and nations within the European Union have come clean on their anti-semitism and crimes against Gypsies and there is a European watchdog body, the European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia. USA has witnessed its civil rights movement for the emancipation of blacks; South Africa, post apartheid had its truth and reconciliation movment. What does Australia have to show for its abysmal and horrible record of cruel human rights violations against their country’s indigenous peoples, the aboriginals? A miserly, reluctant sham of a formal apology from their previous Prime Minister John Howard during the 2000 Olympics! Australia, honestly speaking has never been called upon by the international community to expiate its guilt. In South Africa apartheid was institutionalized. In Australia, it is a reality for those who care to see it being practiced in various spheres of life cricket included.

Like all good Parsis from the times of the Raj, who considered themselves quasi-European and found it a great idea to settle in English speaking white nations of the world, Rusi Surti, an Indian cricketer of the 60’s settled in Australia. Surti had filed a case in the Brisbane High Court against the Queensland government for being racially discriminated at his workplace, State Fire Services Council in 1989. The case was dismissed in 1994 on the grounds that it was banter. Rusi stated: “I would rather suffer from cancer than racism because it is an incurable disease”. “It can’t be banter after working in the department for nine years”. Surti further stated, “It was a traumatic experience. I gave up the job because of injustice. The trauma was unbelievable. I dedicated my life to Australia. I did not get justice,” he said. And his experience of playing in Australia is also scarred. “I will not like to open the pandora’s box now,” he said. “I faced a lot of sledging. I was fielding on the boundary in Melbourne and I experienced very serious derogatory remarks from the crowd in a Sheffield Shield game.” In his autobiography titled Henry, Geoff Lawson mentions how Len Pascoe, a fellow Test player of Yugoslav origin and originally known as Durtanovich was baited about his racial background, by among others, the Chappell brothers.

Peter Roebuck suggests that Ponting should be sacked and Australia needs a completely new team with Katich as the captain; but would that make any real difference? Peter Roebuck states that Ponting has turned his cricketing team into a pack of Wild Dogs; wrong Roebuck, it’s your cricketing system, no, the Australian society itself, that is doing the job of breeding these rottweilers! If Cricket Australia wants to be seen as a fair and inclusive organization so that the multiculturalism seen in the Australian cities gets reflected in terms of talent in its cricketing sides; then it can take a cue from its women’s team which has at least, the exceptionally talented Pune born Lisa Sthalekar as one of its players. There are a lot of Indian and other subcontinental people settled in Australia since many, many years, they love cricket but give up advancing in the Australian cricket system due to its racial Anglo-Saxon preferences. Among other issues the Sydney Test Match has thrown up is the one of the need for Cricket Australia to come out of its time warp and initiate some reforms so that cricket in Australia becomes inclusive and reflects the cricketing talent of the non-Anglo-Saxon demographic variety as well. This can only help make Cricket Australia stronger and better. Perhaps cricket Australia can take help from English cricket in this regard. Multiculturalism seen in England is nowadays getting reflected in its cricket team as well- Monty Panesar, Vikram Solankey, Mark Ramprakash, Sajid Mahmud and perhaps, so many others waiting in the pipeline to play for England. This has made cricket, from an English context, an inclusive sport and taken the stigma of isolation and racism at least, some distance away from it.


Incidentally, the Sydney incident has also shown that there is an acute need of good umpires for world cricket to be organized in a more proficient manner. And the BCCI should see to it that India’s best umpires also make it to the expanded elite panel. The BCCI should also make cricket umpiring, monetarily, an attractive cricketing option.