Monkey around Indian cricket?

By Sreelata S. Yellamrazu

In a classic case pot calling the kettle black, the Australia team is threatening to take India apart for a few stupid spectators who allegedly passed racist comments against a so-called one of their own!

Indian cricket fans, who not long ago were reveling in India’s winning the inaugural ICC World Twenty20 championships, have had to face much frustration with Australia showing why they are the world champions in one day internationals. Playing like a well knit unit, Australia have brought all their skills to the fore in one composite picture and the result has been an overwhelming series victory in what should have been India’s home territory.

It was this annoyance that led to a few irate fans supposedly making monkey like gestures at Andrew Symonds, the only player in the Australian who does not bear resemblance to the traditional Caucasian male. Admittedly, if that were the case, then it would be a really stupid uncalled for gesture on the part of the fans. In the land of Lord Hanuman, (to term him loosely as the monkey God does not seem appropriate.) that people even indulged in such behavior shows a small section of completely ignorant or disrespectful bunch of Indians. But by no means, are they a representative of the hospitality accorded to foreign teams.

But here lies the contention. The Australian team is acting so offended over the entire episode, it makes one wonder if they are just as skilled in donning pastoral robes with the same finesse with which they take the opposition apart. To call it a racist insult is taking things too far. And it is the Australians alleging that this tour to India has been hostile!

The Australian team had better get a hold of themselves because they are not about to find too much sympathy from anyone else in the world. Teams that have toured Australia in the past have tales of mental torture that they will not be forgetting in a hurry. In a country with a great sporting history, their acceptance of aboriginal society within their own fold has been appalling. In fact that Australia is consistently a group of all whites makes it a racist issue in itself and something that Australia has dodged, again with equal panache.

How does one explain Australia’s tolerant culture when Sri Lanka’s Muttiah Muralitharan was mocked at a decade ago and yet again Australian fans’ boisterous behavior was against on show as they targeted the coloured members of the South African squad not so long ago? Australia have failed at an integral integration policy and the reflection of it comes through certain sections of ignorant fans.

India is one of the most hospitable countries to tour. And the joke is that the generosity does not end off the field but extends of it as well. New foreign players receive baptism, foreign teams get unusual success and the Indian team often folds when it should blossom. Take a look at the number of former Australian player who have continued to come to India much after their retirement. And watch the Australian players cash in on the endorsements while in India! And they are received with fanaticism by the Indian media and fans. Therefore, to isolate one incident and throw a circle of darkness about the tour is downright disgraceful.

Mahendra Singh Dhoni may have uttered these words in another context but it is relevant that Australians do not talk anything at all just because they can. The series has been more fiercely fought with words rather than with any nail-biting encounters. Australians have shown cohesion and clinical determination, something that India would do well to emulate. But for Australia to be already sounding horns about what the Indians will face when they tour Australia down under is taking things a little too far. Australia would do well not to imitate Sreesanth’s antics of putting words before concrete action.

There is no denying that the Australians have been a bunch of men gripe with a bad case of sour grapes. The timing of the one day internationals bang after the Twenty20 tourney has meant that Australia has spent a fair time watching the Indian team being praised and feted like none else in the world. The Australians have been generous in their statements to the media talking of how all this felicitation has gone out of hand and that the Indians are in over their heads.

Yet again it shows Australia’s contriteness behavior of not understanding the cricketing culture of the nation. If the Australians thought the Indian team was being treated like ‘princes and rock stars’, they are absolutely right. The Princely states may have gone out fashion and India’s fame to the ‘western’ rock stars of the world may be next to negligible. But such is the fanaticism for the sport that the Indian cricket team is like a bunch of rock stars. They have their number hits and they have their doldrums. The only thing irking the Australians is the fact they missed out on having their cake and eating it too!