social said:
Now, the umpire acknowledged as being the best is an Australian and he isnt allowed to stand in test matches involving Australia.
As a result, we have to put up with total incompetents like (Bucknor and Rudi) and the sub-continent gets Hair.
Yet, when we advocate the use of the best umpires no matter what their nationality, it's rejected.
When we advocate the use of an honour system to determine whether a catch was taken fairly or not, it's rejected.
Unfortunately, it seems that the only way some people will be pleased is if every decision goes their way. If not, they walk.
Apart from a few overzealous Aussie fans ( who support Hair from a sense of patriotism more than anything else), i've never heard Hair being mentioned as the best. No, infact his quality has been par for the course-nothing more, nothing less.
Best umpire without nationality is an absurd concept and in no international team sport is the umpire from either of the nations engaged in the said contest.
But i dont know where exactly you are getting the notion of 'we advocated best umpires'- the change to neutral umpires was done at the behest of Imran Khan, Gavaskar, Holding and Lloyd, largely due to Dalmiya's support for their valid argument pertaining to extremely biassed umpiring meted out by certain first world cricketing nations to the third world ones ( colonialist mentality).
As per taking the word for it- to be frank, the reputation of many Australian players are in question not only amongst fans but by several non-aussie players themselves. True, players having a bad reputation around the circuit is not an Australia-only syndrome but by far, the sheer number of Aussie players thought to be unfair players and the number of people who think that (fans and players) far outstrips any other nation's.
You call it 'envy of success', yet this has been the case since the days of Ian Chappell and Lillee, with many for example holding the notion that the Aussie team between mid 80s and mid 90s was the most uncouth and unfair team out in the field.
Many Australian players are gentlemen but many just play hard and forget the ' and fair' bit. And this, mind you, is not a cricket-only phenomenon.I've heard some Canadian players single out Aussie team in off-the-record convos in fairly low profile sports too. You may not like it - i wouldnt either if it were my country but whichever way you look at it, it is a fact that Australian sportsmen, particularly teams, in general, enjoy a rather low level of confidence (in terms of fairplay) overseas.You may look at it only from a cricketing angle and see the color divide as a convinient excuse but when a white Canadian chick talks about her 'rough experience' with 'foulmouthed Aussie chicks from the flipping rowing team', its a question of your whole sporting culture (and sometimes much bigger than that itself) being singled out through various autonomous incidents.I'll say this for the Aussie sporting culture- they hate to lose probably more than anyone else in the world and their drive to win is simply peerless. This is probably the reason for excellence from a country that is no more advanced or any more involved than many others and with such a small population base(Ausitralia).But unfortunately, this peerless drive to win sometimes just translates to 'win at all costs' for quite a few of yer blokes. As such, 'taking their word for it' is simply not on.
But then, there are many gentlemen Aussie sportsmen and one of the few sportsmen i genuinely admire as a human being is Pat Rafter. Perhaps, to borrow from Chemistry, this 'fudging the boundary between win and win-at-all-costs' is present in the form of 'weak force' interaction within the cultural soup.
