Commonwealth Games

While newspapers reports have been silenced about not highlighting the rogue behavior demonstrated by the Aussie squad in the Commonwealth Games village, the trigger being the humiliating defeat inflicted on Aussies in cricket by the Indians, the electronic media has done yeomen service to highlight this brutish behavior. If that being the case, then, when the Aussies thrashed India in the hockey finals, by the same logic, Indians should have barged into the Aussie camp and beaten them black and blue.

It is not that the Aussies demonstrated such abominable behavior for the first time in the game. An Aussie player had also stuck his middle finger at a match referee, and he got away with it. The moot point is why are the Aussies allowed to get away with it, do they have the muscle power, or the financial power that would change the course of the game in which they play?

One is reminded of Chak De film where writer Jaydeep Sahni had highlighted this aspect of the Aussies, in a rather subtle but distinct manner and it indeed was a telling comment. for a nation that boast about the fact that it is a sports loving country which lives and dies for sports, it does not have any amount of sportsmanship, sportsmanship is only in existence till the time the Aussies are winning, but as they are pushed to the receiving end, they show their true color. Can one surmise that this kind of behavior is owing to the fact that it is in their construct. After all the country came into being from the bunch of crooks and rogue characters who were exiled from England and banished to this island, not to return to the civil society. The generations might have changed, but the recessive genes really come into play as it was during the CWG.

The moot point is why do the sports bodies do not have the courage to impose penalty on such rogue behavior exhibited by the players. Once a will is created to impose exemplary punishment, they would not have the guts to take the law into their hands. For such behavior the whole squad should have been debarred from the game. When we say that India has arrived after CWG, we also need to show the intent by awarding exemplary punishment. The moot point is do we have the intent at all!

Tags: Aussies, Australia, Commonwealth Games, Commonwealth Games, Cricket, Electronic Media, Newspapers, Sports