No longer a gentlemen's game

The sledging controversy is the most unfortunate thing to have happened to cricket in a long time and it doesn't seem to end. One player makes a disparaging comment about another, the offended player retaliates, five other players on both sides jump into the fray, and what started as a single comment becomes an incessant episode of name calling. Funny thing is, neither the Australian players nor the Indians seem to know what they're aiming to get out of the whole thing. What they are unwittingly getting is a lot of bad name, not to mention they're disgracing the game itself. The original aim of sledging, to rattle the mental equilibrium of opposition players, seems to have been lost in a mindless exchange of words & is all about revenge now!

Sadly, the media is linking sledging to racism in a bid to grab eyeballs and gain back the viewers who have become indifferent to the media's classification of anything & everything as 'Breaking News' even if it's something as trivial as Amitabh Bachchan having caught a cold (I'm not kidding, this was actually "breaking news" on a Hindi news channel!!). And the audience is biting the bait!

Let's stop & think for a moment...Do we even understand the meaning of racism? There's a very thin line between what can be classified as racist & what's just mindless name-calling.

Racism need not necessarily be expressed in words. It can be felt as well. It is essentially a belief that all members of a race possess characteristics (usually negative) specific to that race, characteristics that somehow make them inferior to other races. Our attitude towards people belonging to that race, that stems from such a belief, is racist attitude. Therefore racism can be in the form of prejudice, discrimination or violence towards an ethnic group based on their skin color, and need not necessarily be of the verbal kind.

I don't think calling someone a 'monkey' or an 'obnoxious weed' classifies as racist. They sound more like personal diatribes. They would have qualified as racist comments if it had been said that white people are monkeys or Indians are all obnoxious weeds!

Classifying sledging of the sort that has plagued international cricket of late is tantamount to trivializing racism as a cognizable offence, and giving mindless jabber more importance than it deserves.

Truth is, there is no place for sledging in the world of sports. The teams go out there to play a game they love enough to have dedicated years of their lives to it, and they should focus on doing just that. Once the players understand why they're out there on the field, unpleasant incidents such as sledging will automatically cease to occur!

However, since neither the Australians nor the Indians seem to be able to grasp this fact, maybe it's time for the ICC to intervene and declare that a ban will be imposed on any player that indulges in sledging, irrespective of whether he's the offender or the retaliator. It may seem harsh but it seems to be the only effective way to get the message across to a bunch of mindless idiots that the game is bigger than any individual player.