Aussie Sledging and other strong arm action leads to reaction: What is sauce for the Goose is Sauce for the Gander
Jan 8 2008 | Views 616 |
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Tags: Australian CricketCulture Is not Global Cricket Culture Never the twain shall meet
Tags: Australian CricketCulture Is not Global Cricket Culture Never the twain shall meet
Sledging
Australians have been well known sledgers: they call it friendly banter, but not only Asians but even whites S Africans and others have felt the slings and arrows of Aussie unsportsmanship
It is not friendly banter, when Ganguly goes in to bat and while he takes guard, Glenn McGrath from one of the slips asks Ganguly how is Naghma(when there were reports about Ganguly making trips with the actress) is that legitimate banter, or is it mental disintegration ? Is bastard acceptable while monkey(if the allegation against Harbhajan is true) is not. I understand the the abusive tit for tat between Symonds and Bhajji began with Symonds abusing the latter for his behavior vis a vis Brett Lee. If Brett felt aggrieved it was up to him or Ponting to take up the matter with Kumble or the umpires. Who was Symonds, to come into the act ? What about McGrath calling Sarwan and Jayasuriya, black monkeys ? Is it all right for McGrath to abuse all and sundry and make jokes about Ganguly's alleged extra marital behavior, but take umbrage at Sarwan dragging Mcgrath's wife into an argument. What is Sauce for the Goose............
The Aussies should realize that it is NOT Pax Australiana, it never was. A nation of ten plus million cannot dictate what is acceptable behavior to an estimated 1.5 billion cricketing public. If they do, it will be the death knell of global cricket as we know it now.But who are they to do it ? Australian's are brash and relatively elemental in their behavior: if they behave in that manner, they should not react to people giving it back in the way there own culture dictates. In India, Bandar is an acceptable epithet to denote
unacceptable behavior, while in Australia, particularly at someone who looks like Symonds it smacks of racism. But what about McGrath and what about Lehmann calling
Sri Lankans black c---s? Sauce for the Goose ?
If the Australian's want to continue to act the way they do, to continue their hoary traditions, they should Indians to follow theirs, that were traditions probably two thousand years before the Aussie's landed on the shores of Australia originally as criminals, being transported to the colonies. And white referees like Proctor and white wannabee's such as Bucknor, cannot apply white rules which allow untrammelled Aussie behavior, but applying humiliating raps at knuckles ,at Indian retaliation.The BCCI might want things to slide by, but the Indian public will not and the sooner that a set of rules on so called sledging are written, the better. And these rules should not be colored by what Aussies accept as their God given, lingua franca.
In my view, extreme sledging practices at Indians, Sri Lankans, Pakistanis, Bangladeshis, who are culturally not attuned to the insults that it ladles out, is a form of racism.It is obscene when Mike Proctor says that the word of Australian counts for more than the word of an Indian, in the absence of any corroborated evidence. Mr. Proctor, You said that you lived through apartheid, if I remember right, you played cricket during apartheid, where non whites were not counted as quite human. I also remember that India stood with the ANC and Nelson Mandela and refused to play two Davis Cup Tennis Finals(Challenge rounds) against S Africa to show solidarity with non white S Africans. It is the height of arrogance to arrogate to yourself the mantle of a fighter against racism, when your background has not been above suspicion.
Unacceptable Cricketing Behavior
Excessive Appealing, Not Walking when clearly out and cheating on grounded catches might be acceptable winning behavior in Aussieland, but it is not in international cricket. If I were BCCI I will get the ICC to agree to ground rules being codified later, before we agree to playing any more tests against Australia. These rules which will include at a minimum.(1) Banning offensive sledging from cricket: Any offensive statements by cricketers must be given the utmost publicity and the player must be banned from matches if such attacks can be proven. What sledging behavior is unacceptable will be clear when personal attacks are publicized. The sledging law MUST be culturally fair or neutral.
(2) Excessive Appealing: A methodology has to be worked out using technology.
(3) The hegemony of Western and Western oriented umpires of the Caribbean kind
must be broken. In case of a S Asian team, at least either one umpire or the match referee must be S Asian. If we looked at S Asian teams playing in Australia, my suspicion is that more often than not the umpires are generally white or Windy white wannabe's. It would be useful if somebody could check.
Also, to prevent a cabal consisting of the Aussie team and sympathetic umpires ganging up : the principle employed should be that if a team disagrees with an umpire's decision, technology should be used to either uphold or negate a decision. If the team appeals too many times where the technology did not uphold their appeal, they could be hauled up as excessive appealers.
Anglos Saxon rule is generally dead the world over, and anglo saxon rule of the offensive Australian kind, is hegemony without the cultural sheen that the British employed. Both were/are unacceptable. Australians and the Anglo Saxon centric ICC should keep Rudyard Kipling's famous admonition to the English, in their relations with India( and by extension with the third world of cricket)in mind while formulating future policy:
- Naulahka
Now it is not good for the Christian's health
To hustle the Aryan brown,
For the Christian riles and the Aryan smiles,
And it weareth the Christian down.
And the end of the fight
Is a tombstone white
With the name of the late deceased
And the epitaph drear: "A fool lies here
who tried to hustle the East."
© Girdhar Gopal., all rights reserved.
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