My Soccer World

 What a hullabaloo all of us have created! Have India and Australia, bound together by our still noble game, gone to war? Words are flying like missiles, positions are being taken as if bunkers were being built. What has happened? An allegation was made and judgement was passed to the contrary. It happens every day.

Australia think India are flexing their muscles, or should one say rupees, unfairly. India think Australia have had things much their own way for too long and the time is nigh for retribution. Newspapers are selling more copies, news channels are filling up time and simple minds are being influenced. Let’s take a backward step, not a great idea on a playing field, especially if you adorn the Aussie coat of arms, but a necessary action off it.

Are India flexing their muscles? Three examples have been given. One, that Steve Bucknor was asked to leave. That happens. Employers sack employees, selectors drop players when they are not performing. Umpires have been asked to leave the elite panel in the past. Two, Harbhajan was allowed to play on. That is part of the ICC’s rules; pending an appeal a cricketer can play. Three, Harbhajan has got away with a slap on the wrist in spite of three players claiming he racially abused Symonds.

Maybe he did, but maybe he didn’t. The players who think they heard what he said might feel disappointed, but that is not how the law works. If judgement was to be handed out based on what one person said versus what another did, the world would become unlivable. People have got off death row for lack of evidence. And I’m afraid cricketers, irrespective of the colour of jersey they wear, have long forfeited the right to have their word trusted. Anybody who appeals knowing a batsman is not out, and in doing so leads an umpire towards making a mistake, cannot ask that his word be taken.

And what about India asking a chartered plane to stand by? There was absolutely no way India were going to use that plane, and if I was Judge Hansen I would have said ‘keep it there as long as you want, because all I’m concerned with is the evidence’. If, as we now know, there was no evidence, the plane wouldn’t have been needed anyway. And if there was evidence, presented in a judge’s court before eminent lawyers, India would have had no case to protest. If they had still gone home, they would have lost the right to play cricket and that would have been in the fitness of things.

The world rebounded from the depression of the War and the game would have recovered. It has seen more periods of economic boom and bust than you and I have. Had India seen and heard Harbhajan calling Symonds a “big monkey”, there would have been enough voices in India asking for his head. This voice would have been one of the first.

Are prospects of Australian players playing in the IPL weakened? For a day maybe, for two at best. Respected corporate houses have paid serious money to buy franchises because they want their team to win. If Ponting makes 60 from 38 balls in the first game and leads Kolkata to victory, nobody will complain.

Didn’t Cristiano Ronaldo play alongside Wayne Rooney for Manchester United after the last World Cup? Heard any Englishmen complaining about him recently?

This game is bigger than those that make pronouncements about it, its devotees are more astute than made out to be.

So why is India so sensitive about what is happening in Australia? Since I was a little child, my abiding memory is of visiting journalists and cricketers coming to India and making fun of us. We were a country finding our feet, we were not confident, we seethed within but we accepted. The new generation in India is not as accepting, they are prouder, more confident, more successful.

Those bottled up feelings are bubbling through. This is the great dawn of acceptance. It is a phase both countries must understand, this is the storm before the lull.

Let’s play cricket. We’re only a small family.

The Indian Express