Coming to the recent Sydney test match - I do have some strong viewpoints :-)))) Firstly, I believed this "outburst" was an accumulation of "unsporting" behaviour from some teams for a long time ... and unfortunately, the inventor of this was Australia. It is a fact that sledging was mastered by Australia and of course, many teams took the advantage of that ... That included India also in certain occasions ... And when sledging became one of the "untouchable" words, it was nicely coined as "mental disintegration" - again by the Aussies ... It is true that almost all cricket playing countries practice that (with India not being an exception) - but with varied degrees of hostility ....
So what surprised me is not the sledging part, but the part that Ricky Ponting had to "complain" this to the match referee ... To me it was more like a childish behaviour - with the logic that "I can sledge you, but you cant do that to me - because I am going to complain to daddy" ... The touch of "racism" had to be made to defend the complain ... and I like the comment that Wasim Akram made - he mentioned that when monkey is apparently told, it becomes racist or a level-3 offense - whereas when people sledge commentiong on parents / sisters, that becomes a level-1 offense ...
My opinion is that Australia is a bad loser ... and that is because they are used to winning so much ! Whenever they lose a match or feel "threatened" on their supremacy, they can't take it in a sporting manner ... When India came back home after winning the T20 world cup and there were huge celebrations in India, Andrew Symonds could not take it !!! That time the Aussies were in India and Symonds made a comment that India is overdoing it ... Whether India was overdoing it or underdoing it is of no concern to Australia as that is an "internal" matter in India ... but I believe Aussies could not "accept" that India has won the cup - I think the more strong feeling was "we could not win the cup" and so let us try to spoil the party of others !!!!
When I was a kid, we used to lose regularly to West Indies and practically they were defeating any team any where (similar to that of Australia now) .... but even then, we used to love the West Indians ... still Viv Richards, Clive Lloyd, Marshall, Garner. Holding were "heroes" in many of us ... The reason behind this fan-following was that they also played "hard" cricket - but they played like a sportsman, within the spirits of the game ... Now, in this era, no doubt, Australia is the world champs and the best team in the world - but I am sad to say that no young kids (outside Australia) have either Ponting or Hayden or McGrath as their heroes ... Why ? I believe that is the question that Cricket Australia needs to answer :-))
The difference between "hard cricket" and "rudeness" is a very thin line and that too subject to interpretations from different cultures ... so it will be good for everyone to respect each other cultures and hence play the cricket without doing any kind of "sledging" at all .. This should be applicable for not only Australia, but also for India, Pakistan, etc etc ... Otherwise, I fear that these kind of incidents are bound to come up in the future - this might be the tip of an iceberg !
Whether racism exists ? Unfortunately the answer is Yes .... And this exists not only in the developed countries, but in the so-called third world countries as well .. So there are racist comments made by many people from many nations .... And if we could eradicate racism, the world will be such a better place to live in !
