Beyond the Boundary of Sportsmanship

January 7, 2008

Yesterday, the second Test in Sydney, Australia, ended in a farce.

Though the Australians play their game hard, from now on it would also mean that their toughness applies practically to every skill, psychology, technology, plan, demeanour and, last but not least, misdemeanour.

If you are blind about winning only, if the only aspect of sport you are acquainted with is victory, forgetting the other lesser-gleaming facets like competitiveness, sportsman spirit, attitude, etc., then you become athletic brutes who will improvise newer and newer, filthier and meaner mechanisms to dislodge the opponent who is otherwise giving you a tough fight in the conventional aspects of the game.

Now the Kangaroos, seething with the memories of the India tour and the greed to win this Test to equal their own record of 16 straight Test wins, did everything shameful to win against a toughly fighting opponent.

Everybody will accept that Anil and his men fought really hard and didn't deserve to lose.

But horrific umpiring by Steve Bucknor and Mark Benson ensured that the Australians kept their record.

It is always human to err, the umpires being no exception, but the pattern of mistakes and misjudgments, and that too to the disadvantage of only one of the teams during the entire match, leaves it beyond any shadow of doubt.

The pair was supposed to keep the principles of free, fair, frank uprightness aloft in the gloomy sea of our sleazy cricketing battle, but quite disgracefully they let the sense of justice down. They almost became participants in the cricketing duel from the Australian side.

Otherwise, why would almost a dozen misjudgments go against India only?

Australian batsmen stood their ground even though they knew they were out, while the umpires appeared gleefully ogling at their conniving faces.

A couple of stumpings were not given out, one even by the third umpire.

At one time, Ponting himself got crowned as the umpire. The umpire asked him if he had caught Ganguly, and even though he had taken the ball on the first bounce, the Punter said yes.

Disgraceful.

The Australian team and the umpires made a travesty of it.

And to rub salt into the wound, the Aboriginal fellow, Symonds, who sadly behaves in a monkey-like manner on the field, instigated Harbhajan while the latter was batting beautifully with Tendulkar, taking the Indian score to 532, 69 runs above the Australian total of 463.

So Symonds instigated Harbhajan into a verbal duel and immediately complained to the umpires that he had called him a monkey. Without any audio, video or witness proof, the match referee held the Turbanator guilty, slapping a three-Test ban on the off-spinner.

The whole of India is seething with anger. People are really demanding that the tour should be called off immediately.

It is for everybody to see that the Kangaroos have taken many a filthy, unethical, unsportsmanlike leap in romping to victory.

Let them enjoy their feat, but it is for everybody to see what type of techniques they use in every match, because the happenings in this match are just a larger version of their overall approach.

This thing should not be analysed as an exception. It is the rule with them.

They deserve to be condemned.