A lot has been written about how if the Australian cricket team cancels its tour of Pakistan, the players will be free to play in the Indian Premier League (IPL) and earn big bucks. Obviously the security situation in Pakistan is always going to be a concern, but the whole affair looks a bit suspicious. So far, no one has directly voiced their concerns over the players’ true motivations, but I have no hesitation to write about my concerns on this blog. I believe that the players are probably exaggerating their concerns about touring Pakistan, so that they will be available for the IPL.
Cricket has now got to a point where the players can no longer be bothered to play for their country. Even worst than that, the players seem more willing to play Twenty20 than play test matches for their country. This seems very hypocritical on the part of Australian captain Ricky Ponting, who in the past has been very dismissive of the Twenty20 concept. However, he now seems very keen to play in the IPL, especially since he has been named as one of the five most sought after players.
Then again, perhaps the IPL is the first sign of a brand of professionalism that cricket sorely needs. Cricket is pretty boring at the moment because no country can compete with Australia. If cricket teams become companies, and cricket players are paid according to their talent, then some real competitive juices will start flowing. It will be really interesting to see talented Australian players come up against each other – Brett Lee bowling bouncers at Ricky Ponting, or Shane Warne trying to bowl Andrew Symonds around his legs. International cricket can be free to concentrate on the most pure version of the game, test cricket.
I am often tempted to start up a blog exclusively about cricket, but that would definitely be to the detriment of this blog. Being a cricket journo must be the easiest job in the world – there is always something happening on and off the field and this summer has been no exception. The series between Australia and India has been full of controversy, with India accusing Australia of not playing in the spirit of the game. A lot has been written about how India positions itself in the cricket world – both India and Pakistan often portray themselves as the victim of white bullying, while the white world (England and Australia) conversely see India as the cashed-up bully who wields television rights as a bargaining chip.
Ricky Ponting, Australia's number one diplomat
Like China, India is on the rise and I think countries are still adjusting to this change. After India’s controversial loss in Sydney, cricket journalist Peter Roebuck said that Australian captain Ricky Ponting should be sacked. That’s a pretty harsh call on someone who has captained a team that won 16 successive games and averages a very high 58 with the bat. I think Roebuck was mostly influenced by Ponting’s bad attitude in the Sydney test – he became grumpy when Australia was in a dangerous position and placed the umpires under pressure. Most of all, Roebuck doesn’t think that Ponting is a good statesman for Australia, especially within the important context of Australian-Indian relations. Roebuck believes that Australia needs to be more aware of Indian sensitivities. That’s a big call, especially when you consider that India has some very complex feelings towards the Western world. Like China, this massive country of over one billion people wants to prove that it is as good as the West, a sentiment which surely poses a minefield for opposition sporting teams to traverse.
Diplomatically and economically, I think that Australia’s relationship with China is more developed than the one with India, which is surprising since Australia and India are both members of the Commonwealth. However, Australia’s sporting relationship with China will be tested this year in World Cup qualifiers. The captain of the Socceroos can learn a lot from Ricky Ponting’s experience with India – you’re welcome to beat the rising power, but always play fair and don’t be overly exuberant when you win.
Despite trying to ignore it, I couldn’t help but to be drawn into the affair about the Melbourne ‘party boy’ that has been big news in Australia. After watching the Youtube video below, I started to feel sorry for 16-year-old Corey Delaney. He is being hounded by the media, the police and his parents because a party at his house got out of hand. For those who aren’t familiar with the story, the kid was meant to go with his parents for a holiday to Queensland. However, he pulled out of the holiday at the last moment, saying that he needed to work. In actual fact, the kid held a party at his house while his parents were away, and some of the 500 people who turned up damaged property and attacked police.
For sure, the kid was irresponsible. But does his self-esteem and image need to be beaten to a pulp because he made a mistake? The whole affair reminds me of a good blog post written by Sam at All Men Are Liars. Sam deduced that the major motive for journalists covering the Ben Cousins saga (a drug-addicted Australian footballer) was to make a seemingly unrepentant Cousins apologise. Never mind that the drugs were not performance enhancing and are probably Cousins’ own private problem. Think about it – if the media never reported about Cousins’ drug use, then probably most of Australia wouldn’t know about it and his image as a role model would not be tarnished.
But still the media hounded Cousins, in very much the same way as they are hounding the Melbourne party boy. In both cases, the media wants its target to say sorry and be ground to dust. For a great example, have a look at the video below. The TV host wants to know whether the party boy is sorry for causing his parents trouble. Quite rightly, the party boy initially backs away from making a public apology on air, instead stating that he will say sorry to his parents when he sees them. But that’s not good enough for this righteous host - she wants the boy to say sorry to the police and the whole of Australia. She even wants him to take off his sunglasses, something that has become an obsession for the Australian media. The interview resembles an exasperated teacher telling off her naughty student. Authority, in this case represented by the media (despite the media seemingly having no respect for the law), is trying to discipline one of society’s ‘wild members’.
I feel sorry for the kid because everyone is playing the part of authority and ganging up on him. The Victorian Police obviously sees it as a rare opportunity to get public opinion behind them, while the media loves its role as a disciplinarian. However, the saddest thing for the kid is that his parents have also sided with authority. Yes, his parents have the right to be very angry – he lied to them and was responsible for $20,000 worth of damage. Despite this, I believe that his parents should have not aired their grievances through the media and acted as an arm of authority. I believe that no matter what happens, parents should always be on the side of their child Parents should teach their children how to be good people, but they do not need to act like police. Policing should be left to the police themselves, as well as high school teachers and managers, etc. The most important job of parents is to provide unconditional love and understanding. The party boy’s parents have left him very isolated, and I reckon that they should be held partially responsible for the damages that were inflicted on their neighbourhood.
Last week while I was fighting off a virus, the APEC summit was held in Sydney. One of the main features of the APEC summit (besides George Bush’s gaffes) was the visit of Chinese President Hu Jintao and his encounter with a nerdy-looking Australian called Kevin Rudd, who happens to be the Australian opposition leader. From what I can gather, Rudd addressed Hu at a business meeting and started his speech with a flourish of Mandarin. Rudd has worked in Beijing for Austrade, has owned a China-related consultancy and studied Asian Studies at the ANU. When I first heard that Rudd spoke Mandarin during APEC, I didn’t expect his Mandarin to be great. But after watching a few different videos on Youtube, I can say that his pronunciation was excellent, but the content of his speech was a bit strange. However, speaking Mandarin to the President of China definitely takes some balls. Here’s a rundown of what Rudd said during the Youtube video that is posted below. Apparently he also said stuff about when his family went to China during the 1980s, but that part of the speech isn’t in this video.
“Chairman Mr Hu Jintao, in our country you are our most respected guest. I hope you can take a rest, visit our beautiful places, our attractive scenery and our beautiful cities.”
Judging from the above, Rudd was being a wee bit repetitive – aren’t beautiful places and attractive scenery pretty much the same? Anyway, he has done enough to be remembered by the Chinese media for the next 50 years and I am sure he will always be known as the Australian politician who can speak good Chinese. And on the domestic front, the Chinese vote does seem to be very important – on June 23, I translated a Chinese article that praised John Howard’s contributions to multiculturalism and seemingly came straight from the Liberal Party. And George Megalogenis from the Australian reckons that Kevin Rudd’s Mandarin speech was partly motivated by the wish to gather more votes in Howard’s local seat of Bennelong, which is home to Australia’s second-largest Chinese-born population.
For the last couple of weeks I have wanted to dissect an article about Australia's tall poppy syndrome that I read online at The International Herald Tribune. The tall poppy syndrome refers to the distaste that Australians have for the rich and famous, so much so that Australians want to chop the poppy down to size. The tall poppy syndrome is linked to the other Australian tradition of 'taking the piss.' The International Herald Tribune article was written by Philip Bowring, a name that seems very familiar to me, probably because he used to work at the ABC or some other Australian media organisation. Two days ago, I discovered that Bowring is the editor of an online publication called the Asia Sentinel. It recently published an interesting article about corruption in the Chinese Communist Party, an article that I found through the Haohao Report.
I am actually not sure about the existence of the tall poppy syndrome or other traditional Australian viewpoints. I recently read an interesting article by an English sports journalist, who was sceptical of the long-held image of Australians being laidback. During the English cricket team's tour of Australia, the journalist actually found that Australia was full of rules that were enforced to the point of ridiculousness. For example, the Mexican wave was banned and fans from the Barmy Army were separated at the Gabba test match. The existence of 'mateship', a viewpoint that is often touted by the Prime Minister, is also questionable, probably because it can only be applied to beer-sculling football players. I would like the Prime Minister to publicly declare the identity of his mates (I don't think Peter Costello will be on the list).
Does the tall poppy syndrome really exist? Judging by the amount of celebrity crap written in newspapers and magazines, it seems that Australians are actually quite interested in the rich and famous. Or maybe the tall poppy syndrome has a different meaning altogether. Australians are a self-conscious lot who don't like to stand out. Rather than the rich and famous, the tall poppy syndrome is instead directed at peers and relatives, so that people who are different tend to be cut down fairly quickly. Whether this is a uniquely Australian phenomenon is highly debatable. As everyone knows, people who are different in China also tend to be cut down very quickly.
As to Bowring's main example of a Sydney harbour being taken over by the tall poppies, money has always been the most influential factor. Last Christmas, I visited Sydney with my wife and we done the tourist thing, taking the harbour cruise. Those huge mansions that populate the coastline haven't suddenly popped up over the last few years. Some of those houses must have been there since the 19th century. The tall poppy syndrome obviously wasn't able to keep the Sydney coastline as a public asset back then and it certainly won't be able to now. Believers in the tall poppy syndrome need to take their hands off their eyes and realize that Australians are as prone to human nature as any other nation on earth. The people chopping away at the tall poppies are often preventing themselves from dealing with the rich and famous on an equal footing.
Ricky Ponting, Australia's number one diplomat