When Australia won the fourth test in two and a half days, Ricky Ponting went up to the podium to receive the winning captain's magnum of champagne, and he was roundly booed by the Headingley crowd.
The was not the first time Ponting was booed this Ashes series. It started back in Cardiff. It has continued through to Headingley, despite the ECB president Giles Clarke's calls to cease and desist. The Australian captain has ignored the booing.
Nor is this the first time booing has been in the news this summer. Paul Collingwood, the then reigning England captain, spoke in a hurt, injured tone about being booed by a predominantly Indian Lord's crowd during the Twenty20 World Cup. At the subsequent India v. South Africa game at Trent Bridge, there was much sanctimonious commentary (by Jeremy Coney, I think) about how it is nicer to cheer your own team than to boo the other team. Many of my Indian friends and family cringed. Are we really the cricket world's most boorish nation?
Well, the Ashes experience suggests that English fans aren't all that different from the Indian fans. English fans will boo Australia even when England are not playing, as I discovered at the Australia v. Sri Lanka T20 game at Trent Bridge.Expanding the frame a bit, yes it is undeniably nicer to cheer your own team than to boo the other team. But it is easy to over-steer.
Ultimately, cricket is fun because it is theatre. Banter is a part of the theatre. Like booing a villain at the pantomime is a part of the fun. There is a very fine line between banter and sledging, defined mostly by the spirit in which the words are spoken and received.
Sure, maybe the booing at Headingley and Lord's was not in the right spirit. But the English ODI captain can surely learn a thing or two about stiff upper lips from his Australian counterpart.
1 comment:
Well, there is a huge difference here. Ponting got booed at the home of arch rivals. Colly's comments came after they got roundly booed at Lord's!! I was there. There was a guy sitting next to me who was calling out to the Indian blood in Bopara and asking him to desert. That did make me cringe. I think it was ok for Colly to say what he said, though it wouldn't hurt to keep quiet since they already had shut up the Indian crowd by beating India. If Ponting and team ever got booed by Desi supporters at MCG, let us see whether the Aussie captain, team or fans can keep a stiff upper lip.
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