…
Australia lead 2 nil.
No amount of histrionics will change that.
India can rightfully think they were hard done by.
But will it change the score line?
If India get too caught up in this they will lose the series 4 nil. They got shafted, it has happened to all sporting teams in the world. This one was pretty full on, no doubt, but sh1t happens.
India are the closest team on pure ability to Australia, but if they think they lost just cause of umpiring decisions they would be making a huge mistake.
Blaming the umpires sells a lot of papers, but it doesn’t win you the next test, and that is all India can do.
You don’t win respect in the media, you win it on the turf.
India should look at this game critically, because they made mistakes, mistakes you can’t afford against Australia.
Roy should have been given out, but India’s mistake was letting a batsmen of Brad Hogg’s ability take the momentum away from them.
They bowled horribly to him, and he turned around the innings.
In their innings Sachin played a brilliant innings, but his work with the tailenders was defensive and looked selfish.
I’m not saying it was selfish, but when you are that on top of a team as India was, your champion batsmen not out, and batting with below par batsmen surely he should take over and guide the game, not let the tail enders flow along until the inevitably go out.
Indias bowling in the second innings, Harbhajan aside, wasn’t of a great standard. Anil was horrible, worse than I have ever seen him before.
But now they know they can make Australia bleed.
Mind you a wounded beast gets even angrier.
Now the test is over, Steve’s umpiring career is also over. His umpiring is about 5 years past its use by date.
At his prime he was a damn good umpire, but Elvis got fat and Steve got deaf and blind.
These things happen.
Enough has been said about the umpiring and the Aussie attitude in the test series.The important thing is that the rules should be the same for both the sides and they should be made explicit before the game starts.So if Virender Sehwag is suspended in South Africa for appealing for a taking a catch which wasn’t then should Ricky Ponting, Adam Gilchrist, Andrew Symonds and Michael Clarke be. Or are the rules different for different sides.If most sledging is OK but some terms are deemed racist therefore some forms of sledging are not acceptable while others are – then let the ICC publish the rule book of sledging – what sledging is OK and what is not, with illustrated examples, a dictionary etc. “Sledging for Dummies” or “Sledging – a Users Manual” are two possible titles for the tome.For instance – it is apparently OK for Glenn McGrath to ask a West Indies batsman what a certain part of Brian Lara’s anatomy feels like because it was non racial macho Aussie thing to say – basically gutter level personal abuse is OK in the gentleman’s game but not anything to do with race. We in India need to be educated in the tradecraft – we are but beginners in the subject.Or should action be taken against all forms of abuse.For the record let me state calling someone a monkey does not have racist connotations in India – in fact a monkey is a revered animal in India and one of the major Indian Gods is the monkey God Hanuman. However that is no defense since calling a person of African descent a monkey does have racist connotations and carries with it offensive historical baggage relating to the way people of African origin were regarded by their white colonial masters whose descendants today are railing against racism (the very foundation of the colonial age was built on a notion of race superiority – ask the Tasmaninian Aborignes) and therefore this should not be done – but maybe many in India do not understand the sensitivity of the matter. Is there a cultural gap here.The joke doing the rounds in India is that when an Australian child learns to say the word “Mother” for the first time the parents say “Two cheers. Junior has learnt half a word”. For the Australian team to complain about sledging and occupy the moral high ground on this issue is a bit thick.I guess they were getting a taste of their own medicine in the World Cup 20-20 and in India and were perhaps suffering from some not inconsiderable indigestion as a consequence.Harbhajan made a mistake if (and only if) he referred to Andrew Symonds as a monkey. Wrong choice of animal mate – you should have used a reference to some other noteworthy mammal to respond to Symonds’ abuse – swine or dog come to mind as possible candidates – they are pure insults and carry with them no racist overhead. For good measure add on “non-monkey”. After all you cannot possibly be called racist if you say someone is not a monkey. “You mother*%$#ing, snivelling, lilly-livered, non-monkey, son of a swine” logically ought be acceptable sledging in the ICC and Australian lexicon.This error by Harbhajan (if he indeed called Symonds a monkey) gave the Aussies a handle to turn the tables on the Indians by raising the racism issue. The Indians need to learn from this and refine their sledging strategy. It needs to be more nuanced and must take into consideration the subtler shades of meaning of various insulting and abusive terms and what they mean in different cultural contexts – someone in the Indian camp needs to think this through. India needs a specialist sledging coach (anyone for Gregg Chappell for this position – after all he is Australian and should be good at it).But be happy India – in colonial times it took the word of ten Indians to overturn the testimony of one white man. Today you need to have two white witnesses to overturn the testimony of one Indian.The world is indeed getting more and more flat. Indians have been accepted as honorary whites – capable of racism against people of African origin, which was earlier the preseve of whites only.Feels a bit odd though – white people accusing Indians of racism.But have we heard the last of this.We have a situation where a white match referee (from a country that till very recently practised the worst form of racism as state policy) takes the word of two white witnesses (who are not neutral) over that of one Indian witness (who is not neutral) and without any independent witness or corroborating evidence (no video, no audio, nothing heard by the umpires – can’t blame the umpires though they seem to be deaf as adders and blind as bats and just in case this is a racist slur I voluntarily ban myself from selection for the Indian team for the foreseeable future) bans an Indian player (who the white Australian captain finds himself incapable of playing and so will benefit from this ban, and it was this Australian captain who insisted that the racism charge be laid at Harbhajan’s doorstep).Hmm. Food for thought perhaps
I persoanlly think the Sehwag suspension was terrible. And if the same happened to the aussies i’d be pissed. As far as sledging, as a society we are at a point where racism is horrible, next year it might be gay references, 3 matches without neautral witnesses seems over the top to me. lets not pretend harbhajan didnt know the monkey was going to be contentious, after all there was at least one or two articles about her. But thanks for the longest, best written comment ever.
Can’t help but feel that if RP had actually tried to get bat on ball instead of plonking his foot down the pitch or if Sharma had left a ball he didn’t have to play at, all this uproar about atrocious umpiring and Aussie ungentlemanness would just be a snide little remark from kumbles.On the monkey thing, if Harbhajan did call him that, he should full well know how the Australians would react. It’s not like he pulled out a random name, he used a word that the Australians had already made clear they felt it was racist. So you wouldn’t call him that unless you were stupid, or testing how far it would go. Either way, he should be punished. If he did say it. I’m sure the punishment was a bit harsh for no evidence.
Banh great minds, i just said something similar in my new post.