Stop ‘banter’, it is only abuse by another name

Rohit Mahajan

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, March 29

Virat Kohli says that he’s no more friends with the Australian players. Angry words spoken in the heat of the moment — and as part of a strategy to unsettle the batsmen — seem to have offended Kohli. He says he would not be caught calling the Aussies “friends” ever again.

This comment does make Kohli seem a bit petulant; conversely, Australian captain Steve Smith has demonstrated himself to be the bigger man after apologising for his behaviour during the series. After the final Test, Smith also asked Ajinkya Rahane, who captained India at Dharamsala, if the Australians could join the Indians for a beer in the dressing room. Rahane told him that “he would get back to him”.

Party with sworn enemies?

There’s another way of looking at Kohli’s admission that he’s no more friends with the Australian team — he’s being very honest.

Why would you wish to have a “friendly beer” with the very players who have been abusing you (and whom you’ve been abusing) on the field for one full month? They’d taunted each other, called each other a cheat, abused each others’ parents, wives and other relatives — at the end of it, why the heavens would the players of the two teams be keen to get together for “a beer”?

Having a friendly beer after the end of play is a convention that’s historically non-South Asian, but it’s catching on in this region as well. But after a horribly bitter series, it should not cause an outrage if one team isn’t too keen to have a “friendly beer” with the other.

It’s abuse, not banter

Professional cricket isn’t a genteel sport — it’s marked by personal abuse and taunts. What’s called “banter” is nothing but abuse peppered with expletives. Most of it is puerile and schoolboyish. That’s why the worst sledgers insist that “what happens on the field must stay on the field”. They don’t wish people to know how petty and small-minded and vicious grown-up men become in the pursuit of victory.

When Graeme Smith first played against Australia, he was shocked by the sledging. Smith revealed that Matt Hayden — a very religious man, by the way — gave him a two-minute expletive-laden tirade when Smith came to bat. Justin Langer, Ricky Ponting, Adam Gilchrist, Mark Waugh and Shane Warne also had plenty to say.

“All Warne does is call you a c--- all day,” said Smith. Brett Lee told him that “he would f---ing kill me”.

Just a game?

If such are the exchanges the players have in the middle, why should they be obliged to have a “friendly beer” at the end?

There are those who claim it’s good to have a friendly get-together after a series because “after all, it’s just a game”. No sir, it’s not just a game — modern sport is a vehicle of nationalism. It’s a means to promoting the notion that the people of one nation are superior to those of another in physical prowess and sense of fairplay.

It’s either naïve or specious to believe that the ideal of “just a game” actually exists. Stop the pretence that it’s “just a game” — if it’s indeed just a game, then why the horrible abuse and the pitting of nations against each other? Professional sport is anything but “just a game” — players become national heroes if they win and national villains if they lose.

We’ve witnessed horrible flare-ups on the cricket field when “sledges” have escalated to ugly incidents — the Symonds-Harbhajan incident in 2008, or the McGrath-Sarwan spat in 2003, for instance. It wasn’t nice to see Dennis Lillee kick Javed Miandad and Miandad threaten to hit Lillee with the bat in 1981; it was horrible to hear that Darren Lehmann called the Sri Lankans “black c****s”.

There’s little banter in modern cricket. Most of it is abuse. Tough cricket can be played without being obnoxious. It would be a good idea to stop the abuse, through force and fines if necessary. Maybe then teams would be happy to have a “friendly beer” at the end of a series.