AUSTRALIANS PROTESTING INDIAN CRICKET RACISM IS LIKE THE POT CALLING THE KETTLE BLACK
December 27th 2007 11:46
Stephen Hagan, a lecturer in the Centre for Australian Indigenous Knowledges, University of Southern Queensland explored the irony of “the recent saturation media coverage of the Australian cricket tour of India” being focused entirely around “racial vilification of Australia’s only black cricketer, Andrew Symonds (of British and West Indian origin) by other non-white spectators, the Indians.”
In Online Opinion Hagan, who also worked as a diplomat in Colombo in the early 1980s, wrote, “Symonds was persistently racially vilified with chants of ‘monkey’ by sections of the Indian crowd whenever he fielded near the boundary. I was most disturbed to see images beamed back to Australia on national television of what appeared to be monkey gesturing by the Indian crowd.”
But he also pointed out that Australian cricketers and the public are not entirely guilt free when it comes to bringing the game into disrepute from their conduct on and off the cricket field.
He referred to several incidents recounted in his 2006 book, Australia’s Blackest Sporting Moments - The top 100.
He said Shiney, a cricketer who played for Hobart Town and was the first Aboriginal sportsman mentioned in the media in 1835, was beheaded and his ‘specimen’ sent by a resident doctor to an Irish museum for preservation after his cricketing days were over.
Johnny Mullagh, the first Aborigine to play cricket for Victoria in the 1870s, as cited in Anthony Mundine’s book The Man, was told by an innkeeper while on tour that a room next to the stable was good enough for a “nigger”.
Mullagh opted to sleep in the open yard as his quiet protest while his Victorian white team mates slept in the Inn’s beds.
Hagan wrote, “In more contemporary times the mere mention of the name Jimmy Maher brings back memories of a man who had a bad case of foot in mouth. The Queensland cricket captain’s comments on Channel Nine’s The Footy Show that he was as ‘full as a coon’s Valiant’ during post-match celebrations of the State’s first-ever Sheffield Shield victory in March 1995 had to be heard to be believed.”
He also recanted the anguish Shane Warne caused his captain Ricky Ponting when he called South African paceman Makhaya Ntini ‘John Blackman’ in December 2005. The Advertiser reported that Ntini rebuked Warne by saying “Hey, enough of the black”.
In January 2003, The Australian reported that Australian opener, Darren Lehmann, yelled “black c*&#s" in the tunnel leading to the Brisbane Gabba dressing rooms after he was dismissed in the game against Sri Lanka.
In December 2003, The Age reporter Trevor Marshallsea reported racial abuse by spectators against the visiting Indian team.
He wrote, “As Cricket Australia said it was moving to adopt powers to eject spectators for racial abuse, Indian spectators and journalists yesterday reported being called names such as ‘coolie’ and ‘curry muncher’ at the Adelaide Oval and in Brisbane.”
- From MediaBlab
In Online Opinion Hagan, who also worked as a diplomat in Colombo in the early 1980s, wrote, “Symonds was persistently racially vilified with chants of ‘monkey’ by sections of the Indian crowd whenever he fielded near the boundary. I was most disturbed to see images beamed back to Australia on national television of what appeared to be monkey gesturing by the Indian crowd.”
He referred to several incidents recounted in his 2006 book, Australia’s Blackest Sporting Moments - The top 100.
He said Shiney, a cricketer who played for Hobart Town and was the first Aboriginal sportsman mentioned in the media in 1835, was beheaded and his ‘specimen’ sent by a resident doctor to an Irish museum for preservation after his cricketing days were over.
Johnny Mullagh, the first Aborigine to play cricket for Victoria in the 1870s, as cited in Anthony Mundine’s book The Man, was told by an innkeeper while on tour that a room next to the stable was good enough for a “nigger”.
Mullagh opted to sleep in the open yard as his quiet protest while his Victorian white team mates slept in the Inn’s beds.
He also recanted the anguish Shane Warne caused his captain Ricky Ponting when he called South African paceman Makhaya Ntini ‘John Blackman’ in December 2005. The Advertiser reported that Ntini rebuked Warne by saying “Hey, enough of the black”.
In January 2003, The Australian reported that Australian opener, Darren Lehmann, yelled “black c*&#s" in the tunnel leading to the Brisbane Gabba dressing rooms after he was dismissed in the game against Sri Lanka.
In December 2003, The Age reporter Trevor Marshallsea reported racial abuse by spectators against the visiting Indian team.
He wrote, “As Cricket Australia said it was moving to adopt powers to eject spectators for racial abuse, Indian spectators and journalists yesterday reported being called names such as ‘coolie’ and ‘curry muncher’ at the Adelaide Oval and in Brisbane.”
- From MediaBlab
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