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.
Both ARE bad but personal abuse is really much different to racism.
"You suck at batting" is personal abuse. "Your mother is a whore" is also personal abuse.
But a racist remark is a racist remark. There is NO two ways about it.
3) Australians indulge in the latter, but are adamant that it should stay on the field, and should/must not be reported.
Yes, but what KIND in the latter? The 1st or the 2nd example? Most certainly and most often the 1st example.
4) Australians have also indulged in the former in the past, and have also said then: "keep it on the field".
As it mostly should be.
5) They now want to punish racist abuse, but mention nothing of other types of abuse that they freely and unabashedly indulge in.
Because of the aforementioned reason, they're two different things. Whilst personal abuse can get as bad as racism, it is Australian team policy not to do so. I actually posted a magazine article a while ago where, Healy I think, said it was explicitly mentioned to keep the kind of personal abuse (mother, wife, family) stuff out of the game.
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.
He probably should have. But examples of personal abuse getting so bad is not common and are not the kind of comments people are talking about when saying "let's keep it on the field".
For, in reply to Gavaskar, you cannot say something about someone's spouse and then "have a beer after the match".
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".
If there were homophobic remarks Harbhajan would have made a counter-claim. The fact that he hasn't done as such shows his weak position.
If it was "Get the **** off him". I reckon that's fine. Harbhajan has no reason/excuse for touching Lee with bat or otherwise in a striking action.
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.
Wrong. It's completely two different things and if you can't see that then you've been misinterpreting this 'Aussie culture' to 'keep things on the field'.