Racism at the cricket

For the third match in a row, South Africa's cricketers have complained of racial abuse. In the first test played at the WACA ground in Perth, people were heard calling the South Africans 'kafirs', a derogatory term in South African slang. Apparently the taunters weren't even South African expats.

In the latest instance, South African fast bowler Andre Nel complained of racial abuse at the boundary rope. Cricket Australia has issued the usual condemnation via press release.

Should anyone be particularly surprised? Racism and a day at the cricket are as old... well as old as Australia's cricketing heritage. Whenever I used to go to the Sydney Cricket Ground to watch Pakistan play Australia our family always expected to cop the standard 'Paki' or 'Curry muncher' line. We were rarely disappointed. Somehow the fact that two separate teams – one ‘Australian’, the other foreign – gave some people a licence to be overtly racist without any sense of guilt. It was as if being affiliated with the opposing team meant that the abuse you copped wasn’t meant to be racist, only an expression of the fact that you were supporting the opponent.

The faux macho aggression you see at the cricket, fuelled as ever by booze, is something to behold. I think it says a lot about the absence of any meaningful mechanism for men, especially white men, to express themselves in Australian society. Of course this is not to say that non-white males don’t have issues with healthy emotional expression, only that drunkard behaviour at the cricket isn’t a good example of this.

Well might Alan Jones complain about oversexed and overly aggressive Lebanese youths on Sydney beaches. But the fact is that every weekend you can see a plethora of young, white Australian males being total pork chops at any of a number of bars, clubs and pubs. And, of course, the cricket.

Looking at the sport of cricket, I think the fact that the Australian team is so dominant, especially at home, gives the spectator-yobbo the opportunity to get drunk, loud and aggressive with a sense of false justification. My team is beating your team so I can act like a wanker. It doesn't help that players like Shane Warne affirm this core belief on and off the playing field. Neither is it a coincidence that Australia's cricket team is very white. Did I mention John Howard loves his cricket? Very rarely have ethnic minorities represented Australia in the cricket. Indeed some of Australia’s finest domestic cricketers never received an opportunity to represent Australia because they were Aboriginal. This includes Eddie Gilbert, one of Australia’s first tearaway fast bowlers, an athlete that some consider may have been our fastest bowler ever. Yet Gilbert led a tragic life, eventually drinking himself to an early death. There is of course the story of the Aboriginal cricket team from Victoria which became the first cricket team to represent Australia overseas when it toured England. This team has yet to receive the recognition it squarely deserves. I am not aware of a single Asian or Lebanese professional cricketer.

I think whenever Australia's cricket team defeats a foreign country, especially a dark-skinned country, it affirms, at least in the mind of some, Australia's superiority as a nation. This may seem a long bow to string, and I certainly am not saying this is the only interpretation one could make. But all one has to do to confirm what I'm saying is to look at the media coverage of cricket. If it's not the glowing praise for Australia's superior tactics or positive attitude towards the game, its snickering condemnation of the trickery or inferiority of other cricket-playing nations.

Comparing the media coverage of Shane Warne with Sri Lanka's Muttiah Muralitharan is a case in point. For years now Muralitharan has been seen as a cheat. Someone who deliberately 'chucks' the ball (in cricket the 'bowler' who acts like the pitcher in baseball has to throw the ball to the batsman with a straight arm). Even after his action was cleared by biomechanics experts a cloud has remained over Muralitharan's head, especially in Australia. Muralitharan rarely travels to Australia to play cricket. In comparison, Shane Warne is considered ‘the greatest bowler of all time’. A man without peer on the cricket field.

None of the above should particularly surprise us. All spectator sport serves some nationalist function. It is a tool for enshrining passive and irrational obedience to authority. As an avid cricket fan perhaps I can speak of cricket most authoritatively. For at least in cricket, I would say the vast majority of spectators, and not just in Australia, watch the game not out of love of cricket, but out of love of victory. And, specifically, to see their team win. Noting that, I must say that I believe Australian crowds particularly love to see their team thrash other countries. And yet what precise benefit does one gain from such obsequious support? What more significant social function does popular support for spectator sport provide other than to distract and to enshrine within the general population a sense of allegiance to that most vague, abstract and too often violent of concepts – nationalism?

And maybe that is why personalities like Shane Warne are so popular. Because no matter how rotten an individual in the real world he may be, he is an incredibly talented cricketer, and the fantasy of sport provides a comfortable buffer from the uncomfortable moral vagaries of the real world. You know which one I'm talking about, the one in which we lock up asylum seekers and go to war with defenceless countries which have never harmed us. Victory in sport gives Australians something to be proud of without having to weigh into anything with significant moral or political dimensions. Of course, like it or not, we bring to sport the reality we live in, and the baggage such reality entails. Racism in sport is but one example of this.