What's funny to me is how Gavaskar and Grieg seem to be accusing Aussies of double-standards by not keeping 'what happened at the ground, staying on the ground'.
Michael Slater, or Mark Taylor, should have just responded, "Yes, that's true and for the most part it is, but there is a line you don't cross and racism is one".
Getting pretty tired of the Australian fans dodging the point/being unable to understand it.
1) Racial abuse is bad.
2) Personal abuse is also bad.
3) Australians indulge in the latter, but are adamant that it should stay on the field, and should/must not be reported.
4) Australians have also indulged in the
former in the past, and have also said then: "keep it on the field".
5) They now want to punish racist abuse, but mention nothing of other types of abuse that they freely and unabashedly indulge in.
It's almost completely straightforward logic TBH. Racism is
worse, yes, but no one has been able to explain how and why other kinds of abuse is totally acceptable. If Harbhajan has received a 3 match ban for this, McGrath, given his less severe abuse towards Sarwan, should've gotten a 1-match ban. Instead, he was sympathised with. Ludicrous. Hell, we don't even have to go that far back.
The sequence of events is this: Harbhajan hit Lee's butt, then Symonds "let him know what he felt about it" (20$ on there being homophobic remarks, BTW). Surely that included inflammatory words. It stands to reason that Symonds should be reprimanded as well - if we're talking in terms of bans, how about an ODI or two? Yet, there's nothing - of course, cause that's just how "the Australians play their game - fair and hard".
The Aussie team did nothing wrong with reporting Harbhajan, IMO. But it's a discontinuity in the status quo, and it's a policy that should've been adopted years ago. They're now being held accountable for something they've been doing for decades, and it's not going to sit lightly with people who've been at the receiving end for all those years.
.