More and more people are seeking financial independence and the ability to work for themselves from the comfort of their own home. Myself being one of these people I was determined to find an alternative to working for someone else….

“Yes, I hear that spending too much time on the internet apparently causes a lot of “sprained wrists””

Heh. Wrong wrist though. Sorry for the late reply.

I thought the controversy surrounding Tom Cruise’s Youtube video about Scientology was coincidental timing though, considering what we were discussing about religious freedom, the dangers of people creating their own cults, etc.

Anyway, back to cricket, innit.

Also, you have no personal responsibility for such behaviour exhibited by Indian audiences….

Especially those living thousands of miles away in a different country.

I also have to say that I am deeply ashamed that Indian audiences make monkey noises in reference to black players.

Racism amongst members of the general Indian population is a separate issue to the primary topic we’re dealing with here. Also, you have no personal responsibility for such behaviour exhibited by Indian audiences and therefore you have nothing to be ashamed of.

If this is an accepted behavior, I have to say, I feel less inclined to give the benefit of the doubt to any Indian player.

There’s a difference between accepted behaviour amongst some sections of Indian audiences and accepted behaviour within the Indian cricket team. There is nothing to indicate that either the cricket team as a whole or Harbhajan in particular support, condone or excuse such racism amongst Indian audiences, and the idiocy exhibited by some of the latter has no relation to whether a player himself will share such prejudices. It’s a non sequitur.

The equivalent scenario would be to penalise an English football player in response to a false charge of racism just because English football fans don’t exactly have a reputation for civilised behaviour overseas.

It can be unfair, but when you have to make a decision – you need to take into account the context as well.

If we’re going to follow that line of logic, then you also need to take into account the context of the Australian team’s abusive and unscrupulous behavior, both historically and in the present day. This would lead one to a) speculate about what Symonds actually said to Harbhajan to provoke a response (whether it was “monkey” or “Teri maa ki”), b) whether the provocation was undertaken spontaneously or as a deliberate, premeditated tactic, and c) whether they would deliberately make a false accusation in order to twist the situation to their benefit.

You see the path that this leads us down. Anyway, all this — including both sides of the argument — have already been debated extensively by some commenters over on SM, so I don’t want to belabor the issue here. People can check out the SM thread to see how all this has already been hammered out.

“In fact, Sunil Gavaskar has escalated the matter even further, by openly calling Mike Proctor a liar and a racist”

Jai, your point is a valid one. It seems to me that in the absence of hard proof, a 3 ban game is no doubt excessive and unfair.

However, in the real world as well in sports, the word of the victim has a higher value than of the alleged aggressor. So if the victim says the aggressor said something racist, then it is usually believed to be so, even in the absence of proof. After all, most of us do not carry a voice-recorder.

Another aspect of this whole circus, is that we are suffering a case of identity crisis. I mean, we are a very prejudiced nation, and as brown folk, and as Gavaskar has shown (#45), we are masters of using the race card when it suits us, we are just not used to be thrown that to our face.

I also have to say that I am deeply ashamed that Indian audiences make monkey noises in reference to black players. If this is an accepted behavior, I have to say, I feel less inclined to give the benefit of the doubt to any Indian player. It can be unfair, but when you have to make a decision – you need to take into account the context as well.

Sorry, my #37 post comes across as a bit aggressive and rude.

Okay. Good points by Neil in #38 & 41, which basically mirrors my own view on the issue (and my reaction to your lead article).

People are basically upset that the word of the Australian players was taken over that of the Indians (including Tendulkar, who is enormously respected over there) without any evidence either way. In fact, Sunil Gavaskar has escalated the matter even further, by openly calling Mike Proctor a liar and a racist:

http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2008/01/13/1200159283061.html

I sprained my wrist playing football this morning (not that this excuses it).

Yes, I hear that spending too much time on the internet apparently causes a lot of “sprained wrists”

Football shootball…..

“The BCCI and Aussie board are far too much in bed with each other for this issue to have escalated and the tour to be suspended. I just hope common sense prevails and Harbhajan is found not guilty and India win a Test on this tour (but Sydney was really their best chance!).”

I agree, and I hope that the tour goes ahead. It would be nice too if the Aussies cleaned up their act after this, otherwise they will just be exposed as complete hypocrites.

“The removal of Umpire Bucknor took a lot of the sting out of the situation as well.”

Removing an umpire because of a country’s pressure is a bad precedent to set, as such calls will happen every time.

“No worries about post 37. I dont think your points in it are unreasonable at all.”

Thanks.

The BCCI and Aussie board are far too much in bed with each other for this issue to have escalated and the tour to be suspended. I just hope common sense prevails and Harbhajan is found not guilty and India win a Test on this tour (but Sydney was really their best chance!). The removal of Umpire Bucknor took a lot of the sting out of the situation as well.

I seriously empathised with those effigy burners though…was gonna burn some printed out photos of bucknor/benson myself but decided it was inappropriate in a residential suburb at 7am and also (more importantly) a waste of expensive colour ink.

Sorry, my #37 post comes across as a bit aggressive and rude. I sprained my wrist playing football this morning (not that this excuses it).

You are right that I should have included more information about the whole situation. Sorry. However, the reason I did not do that was partly because the story had been running for a while so mostpeople did not need the background, and partly because I considered the whole thing pretty farcical, expecially the quote about ‘moneky’ not being offensive.

Effergy-burning is in the strictest sense non-violent, but I imagine that it must be deeply distressing for someone to see a physical representation of themselves being burned, while people who know what they look like stand around angrily chanting abuse.

Yes you are correct the response of the BCCI is important and it was made in the aftermath of an incredibly tense and emotionally charged match (between the two best teams in the World). Therefore if your national team has just lost a close match largely due to umpiring mishaps and a player is found guilty of racial abuse without evidence, then I consider the BCCI’s response an appropriate one. The team and its senior players felt an injustice had occured, and when players the stature of Kumble get upset thn you know something has gone wrong.

WRT the effigy burning: Like I said earlier its a non-issue. Effigy burning is a traditional non-violent method of protest on the Subcontinent. Sport inevitably invokes emotional responses in people (myself included), there is nothing wrong in that as such as long as it does not go OTT.

Neil and Jai:

I never said that the effergies were of players. I knew they were of umpires. Sorry for not making that clear. I understand that one of the main issues is about the lack of evidence used to convict Harbajan, but the reaction of the BCCI is also important. As for stereotyping Indians as “uncivilised natives”, you know that is not the case. I am criticising those who burned effergies of living people while hurling abuse at them. If you think that sort of criticism is racist/colonialist, then again I would ask what you reaction would be if it happened in the UK.

Jai:

“What I find disturbing is that, instead of focusing on trying to find out what actually happened, some people here are all to eager to quickly condemn the Indians and exonerate the Australians.”

Sorry, who has exonerated the Australians? I haven’t, nor has anyone else as far as I can tell.

Neil:

“Apologies for my earlier spelling mistakes, I was quite shocked at the one-sided point of view in the lead article here.”

When you say ‘one-sided’, I presume you mean in the sense that both the Australians and Indians came in for criticism, since it wasn’t the Sepia Mutiny/Jai version where no Indians did anything wrong whatsoever and it was all the Aussies’ fault.

Saqib I agree with you that India should not have lost the match, and their was some brilliant cricket by both sides. The manner of the defeat leaves a bitter taste in the mouth, and after many late nights following the match (and paying for it at work the next day!) I was very angry at the final result. (In much the same way that Pakistani fans would have been after the Oval Test, Daryl Hair fiasco)

Apologies for my earlier spelling mistakes, I was quite shocked at the one-sided point of view in the lead article here.

Fact is even the Aussie fans know that their team goes OTT regularly. The Australian Daily Telegraph ran a poll straight after the Test and 79% of the respondants said that the Aussies DID NOT play in the true spirit of the game and 83% said Ponting WAS NOT a good ambassador for the game. It brings to light Australia’s sometimes bullying tactics on the pitch do not sit easily even with their own public.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/cricket/7174992.stm

It laughable really with some of the sledging the Australian team dish out, that they go running straight to the umpire when someone gives it back to them. Wasim Akram a truly great cricketer and one whom I greatly respect made the point well.

http://www.smh.com.au/news/cricket/australians-hypocrites-cry-babies-wasim/2008/01/07/1199554571875.html

Harbhajan MUST be found not guilty in the appeal. So many of the regular writers here bang on about Guantanamo bay detainees who are held without evidence (and rightly so) but are quick to condemn Harbhajan as a racist but WITH NO EVIDENCE. This is what all Indian fans (and many neutrals) are deeply unhappy about.

What I find disturbing is that, instead of focusing on trying to find out what actually happened, some people here are all to eager to quickly condemn the Indians and exonerate the Australians by a) repeatedly claiming that “Harbhajan called the Aussie a monkey” — so much for the concept of “innocent until proven guilty — despite the fact that there is NO PROOF OF THIS (and, as I originally speculated and as Mihir Bose has subsequently confirmed, Harbhajan actually said something else entirely), and b) the fact that this incident is being exploited by certain people here — particularly in the main article — to point the finger at protesting members of the Indian public completely unconnected with the cricket team and ridicule them, by essentially laughing and saying “Look at how uncivilised the natives are !”.

Disturbing and depressing to see such behaviour on this blog. I expected better.

Whether there is any effigy-burning going on is irrelevant. Whether any racism has historically been demonstrated towards visiting foreign players by the Indian public is irrelevant. Whether it is ever justifiable to use the Indian equivalent of a “yo mamma” insult towards someone else (even under provocation, as appears to be the case here) is also irrelevant. The only thing that IS relevant is whether Harbhajan actually called Andrew Symonds a “monkey” — and if this was not actually the case, then any allegations about Harbhajan being a racist are based on a completely false premise and this entire frikkin’ discussion is moot.

Again, I also recommend that, when they have sufficent spare time, interested parties here read through the entire discussion thread over on SM (not just the main article by Anna). The debate there has been intellectually rigorous, well-balanced, and many of the commenters are very well-informed, both in relation to this specific incident and also the historical behaviour of Australian and Indian cricket teams.

It was a great test match, that was according to the likes of Ravi Shastri and Sanjay Manjreker – and i concur. Your equation with losing to Ireland is far-fetched, though I would agree, the umpiring was shocking, the worst i can think of in living memory.

However there was some great cricket, and ultimately, even with the decisions India should not have lost. In the first innings, two Aussie tail enders made 50s, no bad umpiring there, similarly, India only had to bat 70 overs, and got bowled out by two part-time spinners, when the Indians are considered the best players of spin bowling. On on that same note, why did India’s two world class spinners not perform as well in the second innings?