Playing Cricket

~
I've found a new fave website : yes, yes, it's Literature Map! If y'all knew about this one before, why didn't someone tell me? I don't know how accurate it is but it's a wonderful idea -- it's like Pandora for books!

We've been spending a fair bit of time watching India play Australia in cricket these past few days. And darlings, I know: I'm not the sports type. But let's call this an exercise in anthropology, shall we? Anyway, the reason I mention it here is that there's a pretty big controversy brewing in this series -- and it's all about race and nationalism and political sensitivity. You know me: I can't resist this stuff! So, for all those of you who don't follow cricket, the Indian national team is in Australia on a 6 week long trip during which they're playing 4 test matches and 15+ one day games. All you need to know is that the Test matches go on for days and days (like 4 or 5) and they're considered the true test of a team. Australia is currently the top rated team in the world; India is one of the very that can take them on and give them a good match.... at least in theory. My sense from having watched a few India-Australia games (the Australians toured India in late 2007) is that the Indian team has a lot of the greatest players in the world currently, but they are brilliant on occasion and not on requirement, whereas the Australian side, though perhaps lacking the same kind of brilliance, work harder and are way more disciplined. Brilliance is all very well but doesn't often trump discipline. In our language, playing cricket ain't like being an academic!

To get to the meat of the controversy now: an Indian player stands accused of a racist comment toward an Australian player. I know it sounds ridiculous but it's not: the Australian in question is Andrew Symonds, the only Aboriginal member of the their team, often described -- both by the Australian media and by the worldwide cricket media (who, I presume, take their lead from the Aussies papers) as Australia's "only black player." Harbhajan Singh, the Indian -- incidentally a Sikh man -- is supposed to have called Symonds a monkey. There's some history here: Symonds was part of the Australian team that was in India in 2007 and he was taunted with what were described as "monkey sounds" by the Nagpur audience. There was a bit of a hoo-hah and a complaint was filed but since the taunts were from the audience and those who were caught on TV cameras producing the noises were kicked out, nothing much was done about this, I don't think. So before we get to the incident on the field, I should say that there's a fair bit of what I would call heckling that goes on between teams during matches, Australia in particular are known to verbalize a fair bit when things are not going their way, Symonds had had a miraculous miscall from an umpire in this match that had allowed him to go on playing after he'd been outed (he admitted this himself after the fact) and "Bhajji" -- as Harbhajan Singh is known in India -- is notorious for his quick temper over heckling, be it from audience members in the stands or other players. All in all, it made for a high pressure situation all around: then the cameras show Symonds saying something to Bhajji as they cross paths, Bhajji does a double take and indicates taht Symonds should come closer and then there's a bit of quick talk to each other. A couple of other players come up to see what's going on, Symonds recounts something to his captain, Ricky Ponting (I know, don't you love these names?), who is joined by the two umpires (including the one who let off Symonds with the miscall) and words are exchanged. Bhajji is clearly being admonished for something, and he is clearly responding vehemently -- but everyone is very discreet and hands are held up to obstruct lip readers!

The next day -- today -- it's all over the media that Harbhajjan is up on a "code of conduct" charge for calling Symonds a monkey. He says he didn't, that what went on was normal on-field talk, the umpires haven't actually overheard anything, there are a couple of players from each of the sides lined up on each side supporting their guys. But the cynic in me says of course they would.... it's a question of national pride, and reputation, at this point. There's no question in my mind that heated words were exchanged though I don't know whether the word "monkey" was ever uttered; I don't doubt (for I saw it) that Symonds provoked Harbhajjan.... nor do I doubt that Bhajji is capable of being racist and offensive. One of the weirdest and saddest legacies of colonialism is that India has internalized a racial totem pole of hierarchies. But this is a weird place to end up: for one thing, given the clear distinction made in North American contexts between "black" and "brown," if I'd been asked to describe Symonds' race, I'd have called him a "brown" man so I find some irony in one brown man being racist toward another. A cricket commentator -- displaying his own naivete and internalized racism, no doubt -- remarked that he didn't see the room for the furor, given that Symonds looked "as Indian" as Harbhajjan!!!

The kerfuffle here seems to me to be a two-fold one: there are a fair number of cricket types emerging from the woodwork, including former Australian and English captains, suggesting that this kind of thing is all too common on the field and that "what happens on the field should be left on the field." If this is true -- and I see no reason why it shouldn't be -- then there's a lot wrong with the state of play. I'm a believer in lines in the sand; I think that there's no place -- and there shouldn't be any tolerance -- for this kind of stuff anywhere, and especially not in the high-profile world of professional sport. But -- and tell me if you think I'm wrong here -- I'm not convinced that the "make an example out of this" is the best way of addressing what appears to be an endemic problem. There's been a lot of coverage of this -- as you may expect in both the Aussie and Indian media: what I'm intrigued by is that the Oz media itself isn't all that happy with this -- there's a particularly interesting piece in the Sydney Herald that makes the point that Symonds and Bhajji have been pitchforked into changing global perceptions of what is appropriate behaviour. And to me, underlying all of this, there is -- as there is in so much of anything deemed a national sport -- a sense of national honour, or pride, at stake. India seems to want to make the case that the Australians dish it out but can't it back (actually, this isn't my take on it -- that's Grieg's (the former English captain's take); Australia wants to demonstrate that they're a politically correct and sensitive country with a team that's left behind any racist and colonial inheritance it once had. Andrew Symonds, about whom I know very little, but who I imagine had to fight pretty hard to make it as far as he has, given his constant identification as "Australian cricket's only black player" is caught in the middle, as is Harbhajjan Singh, a young man from with little education and little control over his temper. In the end, they are the two who actually have to deal with whatever fallout there will be from this row. What say you, at least those of you who made it this far?