The colourful final Australians wanted but didn’t get

 Rohit Mahajan

Melbourne, March 31

Over the course of the last five weeks, many Australians told us that they would love to watch an India-Australia final at the Melbourne Cricket Ground. In the event, it was New Zealand who confronted Australia in the final — and New Zealand disintegrated dismally.

Australian fans say they would have loved to see India rather than New Zealand disintegrate in the final.

“Indian fans and India brings so much colour to a game,” said Rich Jones, an Australia supporter during the public felicitation of the Australian team at Federation Square on Monday morning. 

“We love to beat New Zealand any time. But an India-Australia final would have been more exciting, more noisy, more colourful.”

Times change.  In 1985, when India and Pakistan played at the MCG in the final of the Mini-World Cup, one large banner propped up by Australian fans read: “World Cup final — Tram Conductors vs Bus Drivers”. Some Indian fans found that banner to be a bit offensive, and bordering on racism.

We asked an Indian-Australian and an Australian, sitting together at the MCG a few days ago, what they thought of that banner. Kumar Naidu, born in Australia, thought it was funny but definitely not racist; Bruce Mourney agreed. “Australian humour can take a little getting used to,” said Naidu.

Dignity of Labour

The debate with Naidu and Mourney took a very different path, raising a question: How could it be racist to call Indians and Pakistanis bus conductors or tram drivers? Labour has dignity in Australia; manual labour doesn’t attract disdain or low wages. Some Indians/Pakistanis believed that being called drivers or conductors was offensive; were they offended because of their South Asian mindset, with its disdain for manual labour?

“Indians and Pakistanis are successful professionals in this country,” said Mourney. “So, would it be racist to hold a banner that says “Doctors and Engineers vs Lawyers and Bankers?”

 That’s an interesting point.

Labourer Gilchrist

John Lindsay of Perth Cricket Club once employed Adam Gilchrist as a day labourer. For visiting Indians, that’s a fascinating story — that Brett Lee worked in a menswear shop in Sydney or that Steve Waugh and Michael Clarke worked in a sports shop.

Gilchrist moved to Perth, Western Australia, due to a lack of opportunities in his native New South Wales. He signed up with Perth Cricket Club, which was once represented by Dennis Lillee.

John Lindsay, the president of the club, helped Gilchrist with his lodgings in Perth, and also found him a job with his own construction company. It was hard work in the sun — it involved loading and unloading cement onto and from trucks. “He was very hardworking,” said Lindsay. “He did well in the cricket too — perhaps one motivation was that he didn’t want to lift those big cement bags!”

Cricket Books

Book-writing in another job that requires a lot of hard work. You might laugh at this — what do writers do other than sit before a computer and just type, after all? 

Ask Sunil Gavaskar, and he assures you that it indeed is hard work. Gavaskar wrote four books in 10 years, from 1975. Sunny Days, Idols, Runs and Ruins and One Day Wonders were popular and commercially successful. Why did Gavaskar stop writing? 

For some 30 years, he hasn’t written a book. “No, I have written a book, published last year!” said Gavaskar.

But that’s a collection of his columns which had appeared in newspapers and other publications. Gavaskar said he just hasn’t been able to find the time to write a book after 1985. “I’m quite serious about my writing and I would want to do a book, but since that time, I just not have been able to find the time,” said Gavaskar.

This is quite amazing, but credible — after his retirement from the sport, Gavaskar has become much busier as his career as a commentator and analyst took off. He’s got the time to write columns, which he loves to do himself... But there’s no time for books.

Here in Australia, every cricketer seems to have written a book — even Ryan Harris has written a book. Did you say Ryan who? Well, you’re right — even Ryan Who has a book to his name.

It’s Greek

On the final day, a huge group of men, women and children were on the march near the Melbourne Cricket Ground. They were not going to the cricket — cricket is all Greek to them. They were all Greeks. Australia has a large Greek expat population. There’s a Greek Precinct in Melbourne, next to Chinatown.

Melbourne has the largest Greek population in Australia, over 15 lakh people; this also makes Melbourne the biggest (in terms of population) Greek city outside of Greece.

On Sunday, Greeks, carrying Greek and Australian flags, and images of religious icons, marched to the Shrine of Remembrance in south Melbourne. The Shrine of Remembrance was constructed as a memorial to the people of the Victoria state who served in World War I. Now it’s a memorial to all Australians who have served in war.

Grecians celebrate March 25 as their national day, but they marched to the Shrine of Remembrance on March 29, because it was Sunday and the schools were closed. Schoolchildren, playing bands and waving their flags, were prominent in the march.

The people we talked with talked about the struggles of their forefathers in Australia, including the struggle with racism. “We might have a fair skin, but it did not matter,” said Anna, an elderly woman. “The Anglo Saxons are different. It was very difficult for us, working two jobs, working seven days a week. How can you learn the local language if you’re working like that?”

A younger Greek man said that he and the other Greek kids in school were called “Dago” by the Australian kids — it originally was a racial insult against Italians. He said now the times are different.

There are several Greek schools in Australia now, and children from those schools were part of the parade. Among the Greek-origin kids, we spotted some Indian faces, including a pensive little Yuvraj Singh, waving a Greek flag.

The times are different — it is nice to think that little Yuvraj doesn’t have any problems in a school-ful of Greek kids.