Cricket With Aussies And Russians At Olympics

by Gamini Weerakoon

Strangely, not so this time. Sri Lanka, after being battered and bruised on the Indian sub-continent, England and Africa for quite some time, beat the world’s No.1 team in Test Cricket, the Mighty Australians, in three consecutive Tests quite convincingly. Bur where oh where were the ear shattering ‘Jayawewas’, the songs and dances and the usual self-congratulatory orgies?

Maturity?

Have we matured as a nation not to be carried away with victories in the cricket fields as victories of a nation or have we got anaesthetized to constant defeats in international cricket so much that we cannot discern victory from defeat?

Nonetheless this column’s congratulations go out to Angelo Mathews and his boys, Rangana Herath in particular, for demonstrating that Sri Lanka cricket is not dead and buried but alive and kicking.

Sri Lankan cricketers celebrating their 3-0 test series win over Australia

Test wickets and wives

What happened to this so called great cricketing nation in the playing fields of Sri Lanka will soon be subject to much debate Down Under. We are not pundits of the game but even a schoolgirl will tell – there are so many cricketing pundits among them today – ‘Aney, they cannot face our spinners no?’

Initial reports quote the Aussies saying: Sri Lanka ‘doctored’ wickets for the Tests. Undoubtedly ‘cricketing doctors’ are aplenty in those ancient lands where the game originated and in those lands where it was introduced much before in Lanka. We have no variety of doctors: Tree doctors, Wicket doctors, etc., like in the West. Our doctors are more of the non-playing kind doing part time practice in curing the sick and full time work trying to topple governments through trade union activity. According to the rules governing international cricket the wickets on which matches are played are given over to the control of the ICC and local doctors – if any – cannot do any doctoring.

But this sporting nation has readymade excuses, if or when, they lose. Remember: Murali was accused of chucking in Australia when we gave indications that we were no lambs for slaughter and when they lost the World Cup at the Lahore Gaddafi Stadium in 1996, it was the dew. ‘Sri Lanka Dewly Won’ leading Aussie newspapers said.

Dewly or Duly the poor sporting Aussies can’t take defeat.

As for ‘turning wickets, we refer the Aussies to Navjot Siddhu Singh, the Indian Cricketer turned TV commentator, a BJP member of the Lok Sabha (Indian parliament- lower house) and recently BJP renegade possibly with the intention of bringing a leading light in the new party Aam Admi Party (AAP).

He said on TV: ‘Wickets are like wives. You never know which way they will turn’.

Olympic Games

Perhaps there was not much excitement after the White Wash of the Aussies because of the Rio Olympics taking off at the same time. Certainly the Rio Olympics was great with the stupendous performances of Usain Bolt, Michael Phelps and those long distance runners from Ethiopia and Kenya but the humiliation which Russian athletes were subjected to by the authorities who ran the Olympics would certainly have disgusted all fair minded sports persons.

Double standards being applied were manifestly clear in the Olympic stadium. All Russian Track and Field athletes were banned from participating because of a ‘system’ of doping prevalent in their country, it was alleged. But those who had been found guilty of doping like American athletes Mike Gatlin were permitted to participate!

If this is not Olympic Double Standards, what is?

Some Russian athletes not banned were kept in a suspended state of animation by the authorities by not letting them know whether they would participate or not even 24 hours before the event!

It is surely mental torture for any athlete who has trained from his or her childhood till the last days of the Games, whether he or she is to participate in glorious event they have planned for in all their life!

And finally the banning of all Russian disabled athletes from Paralympic Games would surely go down in not only Olympic History but in the history of humanity as the worse form of abuse of human rights ever on a global scale.

We are not condoning the use of drugs by athletes of any country to enhance their performances or saying that those found guilty of doping should not be banned but a surely those under a cloud should have been tested individually during a period of time before their events and their fate decided accordingly.

The manner in which Russians were treated by the moral enforces of the Rio Olympics smacks of a tremendous anti Russian prejudice of Western nations going back to the days of the Cold War.

At the end of the Cold War presided over by American President Ronald Reagan and Russian President Mikhail Gorbachev, we of the Third World thought the end has come for that insane culture that brought humanity to the brink of a nuclear Armageddon but old prejudices still appear to linger on.

An article in Britain’s Guardian by Simon Jenkins titled: ‘The Olympics hysteria shows Britain has turned Soviet’, illustrates well how politics have infiltrated into the Olympic Games and devastated it.

We reproduce some excerpts that need no comment.

‘Throughout the Cold War, Soviet bloc nations used sport as a proxy for economic success. With the connivance of the International Olympic Committee, they turned what used to be an amateur sport into the equivalent of a national defence force, hurling money and status at their athletes while the IOC turned the Games into a lavish field of the cloth of gold – at some poor taxpayers expense.’

‘The west used to ridicule the communists for this. Their athletes were derided as state employees, civil servants and cheats. Of course many took drugs. Winning was what mattered to the Soviets, the state media being monopolised to convince their people that their ‘system’ was better’.

‘Since Atlanta in 1996, Britain has followed suit. The poor performance of British athletes was considered by John Major as a comment on his government. He demanded medals, and lots of them. The subsidy to ‘elite’ sport was increased tenfold, from £5m to £54m, while popular sports facilities were closing. Money was directed specifically at disciplines where individuals could win multiple medals rather than just one, away from field athletics to cycling and gymnastics. It worked. The medals tally at Sydney 2000 rose from 15 to 28.’

’Athletes are unique among public servants in enjoying a hypothecated tax to give themselves up to £28,000 a year ‘to concentrate on training’. Poor countries can eat their hearts out.’

‘The nationalisation of sport – the hamfisted draping in the union jack after breasting the tape – so clearly diminishes the individual achievement. Ever since its introduction by Hitler at the 1936 Olympics, such chauvinism has infused democratic as well as authoritarian regimes. Olympic Games are like wars, foreign adventures offering regimes a salve to domestic woes. Athletes are recruited to the flag like soldiers. They are declared ‘heroes’ and showered with honours.’

‘For years, the Olympics were corrupted by shamateurism and drugs. The IOC, with British representatives present, knew perfectly well what was happening, but turned a blind eye. None of this explains the BBC, which has brought Rio close to a British National party awayday. The Chinese had it right. They used to dedicate their medals to the Chinese Communist party and people, who after all had paid for them.’

‘Who needs to cheat with drugs when medals go to money? Perhaps the best answer is for countries that have no money to be allowed drugs, to level the playing field. They are cheaper.’ (The emphasis is ours).