by
Rex Clementine
They say, what
goes around comes around. And having dished out racial taunts
and abuses for years and years on opposition teams, Australia
is indeed getting a taste of their own medicine. First time
ever, an Australian player has complained to the game’s
governing body that he was racially abused by an Indian
player. The Aussie involved in the spat was Andrew Symonds
while Harbhajan Singh is the alleged offender. While maintaining
that sport has no place for racism, we are excited to see
Australia getting back what it dished out for others for
years and years. Racism in cricket is a monster created
by the Australians and only when one of its own players
is subjected to racial taunts, the Australians feel the
gravity of it.
Any Sri Lankan who was old enough to watch and read the
happenings during Sri Lanka’s tour of Australia in
1995-1996 would tell you that the Aussies cheated the Sri
Lankans and racially vilified the opposition players on
a number of occasions. The old wounds are still fresh and
a die hard supporter of Sri Lanka Asoka Atapattu, who now
resides in Wellington, New Zealand summed up it all very
nicely. "Australia has produced a number of quality
cricketers and I used to be an Aussie admirer, but after
what they did to us in 1995, I want even Bangladesh to beat
them," he said recently in one of our many cricket
chats.
Atapattu is not alone on this count as most Sri Lankans
want the worst for the Australians and that’s why
that famous Bangladesh win against them in England in the
Nat West Series in 2005 was celebrated here as if Sri Lanka
had beaten Australia in a big final.
In that 1995-96, tour we could see and hear many on and
off the field incidents. On one occasion, Sri Lanka’s
cricket captain was pushed by Australian fast bowler Craig
McDermott and as Roshan Mahanama states in his autobiography
‘Retired Hurt’ another fast bowler, Glenn McGrath,
racially abused an opening batsman after he had carted the
Aussie attack all around the park. As we have repeatedly
said in these columns, the Match Referees had turned a blind
eye whenever the Australians have been the culprits. Although
the role of Match Referee wasn’t something that was
prominent when those two incidents happened, it certainly
was when Darren Lehman abused the Sri Lankans right next
to their dressing room in 2003 by saying ‘black c----‘.
Despite an official complaint by coach Dav Whatmore, Match
Referee Clive Lloyd let the player off the hook. But the
ICC acted swiftly and penalized the player by suspending
him for five ODIs.
Now, here’s a pertinent issue. ICC Match Referee Lloyd
fails to punish an Australian even after he’s been
presented with evidence and another Match Referee, this
time Mike Procter, calls for a hearing without any evidence
at all. The umpires say they didnsee or hear Harbhajan saying
anything and all channel Nine television cameras aren’t
able to provide any video evidence. Sunil Gavasker, now
a respected cricket commentator, very pertinently pointed
out the other day that match officials treat the Australians
different from players from other countries and this is
further proof for that.
Over the years, the Australian administrators have taken
no steps at all to disciplinise their players, who have
been practising the grand trade of racial abuses, which
was very much a part of their mental disintegration stratergy.
We are reminded of the spat between Glen McGrath and Ramnaresh
Sarwan during the 2002-03 Test series in the Caribbean where
questions of racisim was raised, but neither the Match Referee
nor the Australian officials took steps to put an end to
it. And, what about the boorish Australian supporters.
The Sri Lankans players, particularly Muttiah Muralitharan,
has been victimized by Australian crowds with racial taunts
and so have been the coloured or black South African players.
Did Cricket Australia do anything noteworthy to punish the
offenders? For this summer when Sri Lanka toured Australia
for the two-Test series, they introduced a new anti racism
code applicable to all spectators and if found guilty a
spectator could have been ejected from the ground and could
even receive a life ban. This new code in fact came into
effect after Symonds himself was subjected to several racial
taunts during Australia’s tour of India last year.
Not only in cricket, historically Australia has looked down
upon everything that was non white. Haven’t we heard
of their cruelty towards the Aborigines. The indigenous
Australians at present are restricted to the northern part
of that country while those incorrigible offenders from
England are enjoying the luxuries, the more prosperous places
of that vast country has to offer. The whites also wiped
out the Aborigines from Tasmania and we have heard stories
where the whites went to the extent of killing every Aborigine
child.
Australia has to start the reconciliation at its own quarters.
They need to tell their players that racism has zero tolerance
and that Cricket Australia is indeed worried about its fast
eroding reputation. They need to come down from its axiom
‘win at any cost’ and work towards winning the
hearts of the people.
Some say this Australian team is the best to have played
the game, better than Bradman’s 1948 Invincibles and
better than Clive Lloyd’s teams of the 1980s. Well,
may be, they are also worst sportsmen to have played the
game. Sportsmanship is a word that’s alien to the
Australian teams and while everything looks fine with them
when they win, when things don’t go their way, you
see the true colour of the Australians.
Mr. Ponting apparently complained to the umpires that Symonds
had been racially abused. Well before complaining about
things, Mr. Ponting needs to clean up a few things. He needs
to tell his players to respect the opposition. You see Mr.
Ponting, you don’t demand respect, you earn it.
Courtesy - SNNI |