Cricket, crowds and racism

Peter Roebuck writes about the treatment of Andrew Symonds in the Sydney Morning Herald, offering insight into India and examining racism in cricket.

It has in some quarters been argued that Symonds and company are being precious and that, weary of accusation and bemused by their unpopularity, Australians are trying to show they are also sometimes victims. Darrell Hair's collapsed case against wrongful dismissal depended on racial prejudice. But is not the law open to all-comers? If Symonds, Hair or anyone else feels they have been mistreated owing to the colour of their skin then let the matter be investigated. Symonds has not railed against every provocation. Just this one.

In the same paper Andrew Webster writes a moving piece about the Western Suburbs club in Sydney and Soumya Bhattacharya says lunatic fringes should not define countries.

The Australian’s Peter Lalor, who has been criticised in India for his reporting of the monkey chants, takes an in-depth look at the past week.

Pity Andrew Symonds. Not that he wants your pity. Or, for that matter, attention. He is a man who has never courted publicity or plaudits. Yet here he sits, blinking and bewildered, in the middle of a storm that is not of his making or his liking. Symonds loves a scrap and can go as hard in a obscenity-laden exchange as anyone in cricket, but this sort of fight and this sort of debate sits as comfortably with him as a necktie.

In the reality show that is India today, there is every danger that the new, aggressive, young "superior" India could end up as a farcical entity, doing no good to itself and to those who wish it well, writes Pradeep Magazine in the Hindustan Times.

Antara Dev Sen, writing in the sify website, explores the inherent rasicm in Indian society.

We disrespect dark skin, of course, even though we are primarily dark-skinned ourselves. Our attempts at whitening our faces have continued for centuries – through grandma’s remedies to today’s fairness creams. We even have fairness creams for men, a new trend in men’s style. But a lighter skin colour does not always protect you from taunts. We are downright racist and rude to the people we call ‘chinks’ – even if they are rich or powerful like the Japanese or Chinese. And it doesn’t stop with foreigners.

Also read Siddharth Saxena in the Times of India and Srinivasan Ramani in the Post.

Meanwhile Kaushik Sunder Rajan reviews the series on his DailyCric blog where he says India's solution lies not in youth, but in depth.