Australian Cricket marches on……..are u watching Mr. Gavaskar?

It has been a perfect start to the ICC cricket mela (World Cup’07) barring the death of Bob Woolmer; a glittering opening ceremony, a splendid run in the tournament for the host nation and a war of words between two of cricket’s many great avtaars. Here are the views of Sunil Gavaskar followed by the responses of Ricky Ponting:

Gavaskar: “There is not the slightest doubt that in the last decade or so the Aussies have been awesome in batting, bowling and fielding which has taken them to the top of the cricketing ladder in both Test and limited overs cricket.
But they have also been awful in the way they have sometimes behaved on the field much to the chagrin of the traditional fans of the game,"

Ponting: "For him to go on about behavior, not too many captains have dragged their teams off the field, either," Ponting said. "I don't mind if 'Mr. Perfect' comes out and goes on about our team; I know we are all not perfect. We are not going to keep everyone happy 100% of the time. But for some of these guys that have done it all themselves, it's pretty high and mighty for them to say that."

I have no reservations in admitting that I am a big admirer of Australian Cricket but I agree to Gavaskar’s comment to only a certain extent.

The Australian Cricket team has been a force for more than a decade now and no team has come close to put up a reasonable challenge to them. The fact is not that the other teams are not trying hard or playing better or maybe their cricket standards going down, it’s just that Australian team have had the fortune of fielding together some players like Warne, McGrath, Gilchrist, Ponting etc who are amongst the best the game has ever seen.
The Australians play aggressive cricket and play at a standard which does not differ irrespective of the opponent they are up against.

Aggressiveness is a trait quite handy for succeeding and Australian Cricket team is no exception. They play tough cricket and deserve all they have achieved. So if Mr. Gavaskar thinks that Ponting has a big mouth, well too bad Mr. Gavaskar but Ponting has every right to promote his team players and be aggressive. His team performs in difficult circumstances and in most cases he leads the charge.

Good humored banter is acceptable but sledging has no place in a sport like cricket. There is no denying that numerous cases have been witnessed where Australian Cricketers have been seen sledging on the field. Some of the famous incidents include the McGrath – Sarwan tiff in a match. But things have changed over the past few years as Cricket Australia (governing body) has come out with clear guidelines for its players and how their behavior should be on the playing field. There has been a drastic change seen in on field behavior since then.

The point here is that the on-field umpires are the best equipped people on the field to notice any sledging and report to the match officials and noticeably records don’t show too many Australian Cricketers being punished for sledging. Does that mean the umpires are not doing their job or the players’ talk is not considered as serious as sledging? I will go with the latter one placing full confidence in the abilities of the umpires.

Allan Border rightly points out “Cricket is a global sport in which different cultures lock horns out in the middle. Only the nuances of the game may vary from country to country”. What might be a light humored statement for people from a particular culture might turn out to be an offensive statement for the other. Each sportsman is gutting it out in the middle and emotionally charged and in the heat of the moment anything coming out of anyone’s mind is quite a possibility. In person it’s quite certain they are a different individual altogether.

I think Sunil Gavaskar should help fix things in team India (if he can work around his inflated ego) rather than engaging in mudslinging with Ponting so that we have something to talk about whenever encountering an Australian Cricket enthusiast. I mean for god sake look at the disgusting performance of the Indian cricket team. And yeah……I am rooting for the Australian Cricket team to take the Cricket World Cup.