India raises hackles of Aussies

India’s boisterous celebrations after winning the World Twenty20 title did not go down well with Australia, cricket’s best team.

Australia might have suffered the odd bloody nose, but for more than a decade it has been head and shoulders above the rest of the cricket world. Whenever it has lost, ruthless revenge has been exacted at the next meeting.

Australia also does not like anyone celebrating a cricketing victory other than itself. India would have done well to look at what happened to England.

In 2005, England’s cricket team finally beat Australia in an Ashes Test series for the first time since 1986. It was a narrow 2-1 victory and all of England celebrated, with tens of thousands turning out for a victory parade in Trafalgar Square. The team was hosted by then Prime Minister Tony Blair and each member of the England cricket team went on to be awarded an MBE by the Queen.

England’s cricketers lapped up the honours, the press interviews and the adulation. The Australians waited for the return tour and when England arrived Down Under last year, the Australians gave them a hiding for the ages. The hosts swept the Tests, completing the first 5-0 whitewash in an Ashes series since 1921. England was humiliated at every turn and at the end of the tour there was no doubt about who was boss.

And so the Australian cricket team arrived in India complaining about their hosts’ extravagant celebrations over the World Twenty20 win. All-rounder Andrew Symonds was most vocal in his disdain, dubiously stating that the Australians were humble when they celebrated their numerous victories. India’s celebrations, he said, triggered a burning desire to bring them down.

It was in that charged backdrop that a confident India and a determined Australia clashed in a seven-match ODI series that wrapped up last week. True to form, the Australians gave India a sound thrashing, winning 4-2 with one match rained out. And Symonds put his money where his mouth is and walked away with the man-of-the-series award after a superlative display that saw him score a century and three 50s in his six innings.

The crowd not only booed Symonds, who is black, but also subjected him to what the Australians called “monkey chants.” The first time it happened, at Vadodara during the fifth match, authorities seemed confused that the incident was being categorized as racist abuse, given that many Hindus consider monkeys to be sacred and a manifestation of the god Hanuman. The police commissioner even suggested that fans were praying.

A seething Symonds responded in the next match at Nagpur by smoking India’s bowlers for 107 runs off only 88 balls, a gem of an innings that helped Australia to its fourth win of the series. The crowd was at its most boorish in Mumbai during the final match, but by then the larger issue of cricketing supremacy was sealed with Australia pounding into submission those who aspire to the throne.

There is, however, still the anomaly of an Australian cricketer suffering racist abuse. There have been incidents of cricketers on tour of Australia copping racist abuse, as England’s Monty Panesar, Sri Lanka’s Muttiah Muralitharan and any number of South African players could testify, but the Andrew Symonds affair is the first publicized instance of an Australian being on the receiving end.

One hopes that this does not mark the beginning of an unwelcome trend.

ON THE BOUNDARY – One more insult to the people of the West Indies…by some people in the West Indies

The West Indies Cricket Board (WICB) has named a new coach for the West Indies team and, as good or as brilliant as John Dyson may be, I do not agree with it. And I do not agree with it for one simple reason.

I believe, and no one can change my mind on this, that it is an insult, not only to West Indies cricket and not only to those West Indians who have played the game and who are involved in coaching but also, and more importantly, to the people of the West Indies.

Australia are the best in world, there can be no question about that and in their bid to be the best in the world, that may be why the Board, as those in India, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka have done or are doing, have gone once again for an Australian coach.

The Board should remember, however, that after making their debut in Test cricket in 1928, the West Indies rose to be among the best in a short time. By the 1960s they were unofficial champions of the world, between 1976 and 1995 they were the best, officially and unofficially, in the world.

One of those teams, with the likes of Gordon Greenidge and Desmond Haynes, Viv Richards and Clive Lloyd, Alvin Kallicharran and Lawrence Rowe, Andy Roberts and Michael Holding, Joel Garner and Colin Croft around, is arguably the greatest team in the history of the game.

Produced great players

Over the 79 years since the beginning, the West Indies have produced some of the greatest players in the world including Gary Sobers, Richards and Brian Lara, three batsmen, apart from George Headley who matched strides with Don Bradman, rated as the best of their time and among the best of all time, and in Sobers, the boy from Bay Street in Bridgetown, they possessed, undoubtedly, the greatest cricketers of all time.

On top of that, two West Indians, Frank Worrell and Lloyd, are rated among the greatest captains of all time. Along with that, six of the 15 cricketers who have been knighted for their great performances in the game are West Indians, and all that was before the coming of the Australians.

In other words, but for the early days when the English played their part, West Indies cricket developed under West Indian eyes and over the years, including the years of glory, including those 19 years when they were the best on the planet, it has been played the West Indies way.

West Indies cricket is good enough to find a coach from among those West Indians who have played the game and to go outside to find one is a waste of money – money that is so needed at the grassroot level of the game at that.

It is, however, more than that, and that is what hurts.

No faith in our people

The employment of a foreigner, an Australian, to coach the West Indies team, suggests, at least it does to me, that despite the achievements of West Indians with bat and ball and as captain, and even though a West Indian has been the president of the ICC, the Board has no faith in its own people, not to do a heart transplant, not to rid the world of a plague, but to coach a cricket team – their own cricket team.

That, to me, is telling the people of the West Indies that they are not good enough. That, to me, in the 21st century, is an insult to the people of the West Indies.

When I look at the coaches of Australia, England, South Africa and New Zealand, that tells me something. That, to me, is one reason why some people in the world believe they are superior to West Indians; that, to me, is one reason why some West Indians may always feel inferior to some people in the world; and that, to me, is one reason why, as good as Dyson may be, as talented as the West Indian cricketers may be, it will take a long time for them to win again.

The West Indies Board has, once again, failed the people of the West Indies.

Way back in 1950, C. L. R. James, a great West Indian, was at Lord’s when the West Indies, under John Goddard and with champions like Worrell, Everton Weekes and Clyde Walcott, Sonny Ramadhin and Alfred Valentine, won their first match in England. And, after writing about the celebration, he told the story of over-hearing an Englishman saying to another Englishman, “Imagine, how great they are and yet it takes a white man to lead them.”

Things, it appears, have not changed, at least not, it seems, as far as the Board is concerned.

For the West Indies, victory in cricket is important and there is no question about it. The price, under a foreign coach, under an Australian, however, is too high.

Regardless of how good and how qualified he is, I wonder when the world will see a West Indian, a Pakistani, or an Indian as the coach of Australia, England, South Africa or New Zealand.

Sehwag on trial in the Challenger Trophy

Ahmedabad : Virender Sehwag, who leads the India Blue side will be among the high profile names on trial, when the annual NKP Salve Challenger Trophy begins on Thursday.

The event, which returns to Ahmedabad after seven years, will be held at the Sardar Patel Stadium at Motera, Gandhinagar.

Recently, Sehwag opted out of the Hong Kong Sixes cricket tournament as he was named to lead India Blues. A good performance in Challenger Trophy could see Sehwag make his way back into the one-day side. Sehwag was a member of the Indian team that emerged victorious in Twenty20 World Cup, but was then dropped for the one-day series against Australia.

He, however, came back into the side for the one-off Twenty20 match against Australia. Sehwag failed but India won the match.

The wicket is expected to be both pacy and bouncy and test the aspirants looking for a place in the national side against Pakistan in the first week of November.

The four-day tournament, which sees three matches, begins Oct 25 and the selectors will announce the Indian side on Oct 27.

While Sehwag leads the India Blues, Mohammed Kaif will be the skipper for India Red and Parthiv Patel will lead India Green.

Former Test star and medium pacer, Dhiraj Parsana is the curator and he has promised some lively action on the wickets.

The Gujarat Cricket Association will also honour the Pathan brothers, Irfan and Yousuf, who were members of the winning Indian team at the Twenty20 World Cup. They will be rewarded with Rs.500,000 each.

Ponting tips Indians to maintain their rage over a long and heated summer

IT WASN’T just Indian crowds who took a more confrontational attitude towards Australia this month. The Indian players themselves – led by paceman Shantha Sreesanth – gave no quarter in front of boisterous stadiums on home soil.

But as a string of visiting teams and players have discovered (most notably combative South African captain Graeme Smith), maintaining the hard line during a long summer tour can be a challenge. Yet Australian Test and one-day captain Ricky Ponting, back from a successful limited-overs tour of India, has forecast a similar battle when the Indians tour here from December.

“They made it pretty clear right at the start of the series they were going to fight fire with fire but for us we know that’s generally not the way they play their cricket,” Ponting said. “We’ve got a lot of cricket against them in the next few months so it will be interesting to see just how long that aggressive-natured cricket does last from them.”

The Indians arrive in Australia after a home series against Pakistan and have just one three-day match against Victoria to prepare for the Boxing Day Test. By the time January ends they will have played four Tests before the caravan rolls into a triangular one-day series with Sri Lanka. NSW leg spinner Stuart MacGill, desperate to fill Shane Warne’s large void this summer, echoed Ponting’s theme.

“If you believe in yourself and you’re convinced the way you’re playing is the right way to play then it doesn’t really matter how you carry yourself,” he said.

“It’s always a danger if you’re trying to become someone you’re not because you’ve got to concentrate on a whole lot of things out on the field, not just bowling. I try and keep it as simple as I can because bowling to [Sachin] Tendulkar is hard enough.”

The aggressive stance was harder away from home, MacGill noted. “It’s always easier when you’ve got a lot of support at home to ride your emotions,” he said. “They only need to look around and know they’ve got a billion countrymen supporting them. I think you’ll find it doesn’t work for them if they’re pretending.”

With headlines about the racist sledging of all-rounder Andrew Symonds dominating the Indian tour, Ponting appealed to Australian crowds to treat the Indians as “they would any other team”.

“I don’t think they should be treated any differently because of what’s happened over there,” he said. “As far as I’m concerned this whole racism stuff is completely unacceptable in any walk of life, let alone on a sporting field. I’m sure that at different times Sreesanth and a few of the guys will cop a hard time from the Australian fans. That will generally happen at some stage to most teams that tour here, but I just hope – I’ll keep my fingers crossed – there’s no racial stuff comes up at all through the summer.”

Ponting said he had not spoken with the Indian players about their crowds’ taunting of Symonds with monkey noises and gestures but said they should have been embarrassed by the incidents.

“I imagine they would be,” he said. “They should be. I would be in Australia.”

Ponting said Sreesanth, who clashed with Symonds several times during the tour, used some of the combative armoury of a fast bowler, and expected the fire and brimstone to continue should he lead the attack in Australia.

“He generally does have a bit more aggression about him, a bit more body language than some of their other players do,” Ponting said. “They’re fairly passive sort of people, Indians, and he’s probably one from left field.”

Ponting said leading the attack in Australia would be a challenge.

“I think that’s always been their greatest challenge when they come to Australia, bowling us out twice,” he said. “They’ll bring a couple of spinners. Harbhajan [Singh] and [Murali] Kartik have been bowling really well and [Anil] Kumble will be in their Test squad.”

Arjuna Ranatunga reignites cricket race row

FORMER Sri Lankan captain Arjuna Ranatunga has ignited the race debate by revealing he advised champion spinner Muthiah Muralidaran not to tour Australia this summer.

In the aftermath of a racially heated one-day series between Australia and India, Ranatunga — now a member of the Sri Lankan parliament — fears Muralidaran again will be taunted by aggressive Australian crowds in his team’s two Tests in Brisbane and Hobart.

Muralidaran, the man with the most controversial bowling action in world cricket, has had bananas thrown at him at the Gabba on previous tours and boycotted the 2004 Top End series because of potential trouble.

“I tell you very honestly, I told him I wish he wasn’t touring Australia because of the amount of trouble he has had,” Ranatunga said from Colombo yesterday.

“But he wants to go. It was up to him to decide that.

“My personal opinion was that he shouldn’t go. I think Murali is tough enough to go through that and take whatever he gets.”

His warning came as Australian captain Ricky Ponting returned from the sub-continent saying the Indian players should be embarrassed by the fans’ racist abuse and monkey gestures at all-rounder Andrew Symonds.

“They should be (embarrassed) because I would’ve been in Australia,” Ponting said.

He urged local fans to treat the Indian and Sri Lankan sides with respect when they toured here.

“I’d like to see the Australian fans and public treat the Indian team the same way they would any other team,” Ponting said.

“As far as I’m concerned, this whole racism stuff is completely unacceptable in any walk of life, let alone on a sporting field.”

Many commentators believe the Indian cricket team’s arrogant attitude towards Australia and the fiery over-the-top on-field confrontations often involving fast bowler Shanth Sreesanth helped ignite the Indian fans’ racist behaviour.

Ponting admitted he had been surprised by the Indians’ new in-your-face attitude, but questioned if they would maintain their cockiness in Australia.

“They made it pretty clear right at the start of the series they were going to fight fire with fire, so to speak,” Ponting said.

“But I think at the same time for us we know that’s not the way they generally play their cricket.

“We’ve got a lot of cricket against them over the next couple of months and it will be interesting to see how long a lot of that aggressive nature of cricket lasts.”

Muralidaran, who missed the just-completed home one-day series against England because of a bicep injury, will arrive with his teammates in Adelaide tomorrow.

He needs only nine scalps to break Shane Warne’s world record of 708 Test wickets, with the series opener beginning at the Gabba on November 8.

Ranatunga was captain of Sri Lanka when Muralidaran was infamously no-balled several times for throwing by controversial Australian umpire Darrell Hair at the MCG in 1995-96.

He has since endured repeated chants of “no-ball” by Australian crowds during his bowling delivery and was left incensed three years ago after Prime Minister John Howard publicly agreed he was a chucker.

While opinion of his rubber-wristed bowling action has divided the cricket world and has some claiming an asterix should be inked next to his name when he breaks Warne’s record, it is the racial abuse that has hurt the most.

“It’s not the entire crowds that we are hearing and behave like that,” Ranatunga said. “It’s very limited people. Most of the people know the game pretty well and understand it very well. He is a tough little fella. It will give him more motivation to break the record in front of them.”

Ponting said Symonds showed tremendous grace under a torrent of crowd abuse that lasted up until the last ball of Sunday’s final Twenty20 match against India.

However, he said none of the Indian players saw fit to apologise to Ponting for their fans’ extraordinary behaviour.

“I’m not sure if they did to Andrew, but they certainly didn’t with me,” Ponting said.

“It affected him (Symonds), but he didn’t want it to become such a huge issue.”

Cricket Australia is working with its state associations on ways of improving crowd behaviour this summer.

It hopes a new campaign, expected to be released within a fortnight, will hit the mark.

Ponting warns Aussie fans not to retaliate in race row

SYDNEY (AFP) — Australia cricket captain Ricky Ponting returned home from a tour of India marred by racial abuse with a warning to home fans not to retaliate when India visit in December.

Ponting said while some Indian players would likely be given a “hard time” by fans when they played Down Under, he hoped this would not include racial taunts such as those endured by Australian all-rounder Andrew Symonds in India.

Symonds, the only black player on the team, was subjected to monkey gestures during the last game of a seven-match one-day series in Mumbai last Wednesday after earlier receiving similar abuse during the fourth game at Vadodara.

Ponting, whose team won the Indian one-day series 4-2 before losing a one-off Twenty20 match, urged Australian fans to treat the subcontinental team as they would any other touring side.

“I don’t think they should be treated any differently because of what’s happened over there,” he said.

“As far as I’m concerned, this whole racism stuff is completely unacceptable in any walk of life, let alone on a sporting field.”

Ponting said nobody from the Indian team had spoken to him about the taunts, adding that they should be embarrassed by the crowd’s attitude towards Symonds.

“I imagine they would be. They should be. I would be, in Australia,” he said.

Australian cricket crowds do not have a lily-white reputation, with racial slurs and chants directed at some of the South African team in previous years.

The Australian skipper singled out paceman Shanthakumaran Sreesanth, who has been involved in on-field verbal clashes with Symonds, as one likely target.

“I’m sure that at different times Sreesanth and a few of the guys will cop a hard time from the Australian fans,” Ponting told reporters in Sydney.

“That will generally happen at some stage to most teams that tour here, but I just hope — I’ll keep my fingers crossed — there’s no racial stuff (that) comes up at all through the summer.”

Australia and India play four Tests and one Twenty20 game during the summer tour which begins in December in Melbourne.

Both will also take part in a triangular one-day series with Sri Lanka and there are fears that champion spin bowler Muttiah Muralitharan could be baited by crowds as he seeks to break Australian Shane Warne’s wicket-taking record.

Muralitharan has endured a turbulent relationship with Australian crowds since he was no-balled for throwing in Melbourne in 1995 and refused to tour in 2004.

He now needs just nine wickets to break the recently retired Warne’s record.

But Warne said Muralitharan, who was welcomed as a champion when he returned to play in Australia in a tsunami appeal match in 2005, would be well received.

“Australian crowds are pretty good, I remember Jacques Kallis scored 100 at the Melbourne Cricket Ground and the crowd stood up and clapped him,” Warne told reporters.

“There’s a lot of good sportsmanship with the Australian public.”

Warne also backed his long-time understudy, Stuart MacGill, for inclusion in the Test team as selectors prepare to name the players for the first Test against Sri Lanka starting on November 8.

“He’s been around for a long time and deserves his chance,” Warne said.

Australia’s pace line-up is also not sewn up, with Ponting backing Mitchell Johnson after his performance in India where he topped the averages with 14 wickets at 18.57.

“He’s done everything right as far as putting his name up in front of the selectors,” Ponting said. “It’s going to be an interesting selection.”