cnerd123
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I never meant to talk about policing it.Yeah but these things are absolutely impossible to police. Suppose someone makes a racist slur to another player, the latter reports, the player in question denies. What are you going to do? I am sure you weren't sleeping in 2007 right?
One guy's word against another. What do you do?
You are assuming the way things should work in an ideal situation. I am pointing out the way it actually works in reality. We all have our biases. We feel we 'our way of sledging' is right and 'their way' is wrong. There is no objective line of demarcation.
That's what I am trying to say, it's not possible to control or police this. Either you allow all kind of verbal sledging, or you ban it altogether.
I meant to talk about its place in the game. Do people approve of disapprove of it. Where do people draw a line?
In terms of policing it..it's more or less impossible to control what someone says. But the way I see it, once the cricketing community figures out what is kosher and what isn't, you will see a form of self-policing amongst professional cricketers. The problem now is, as you pointed out, everyone's standards are different, and young cricketers will end up doing what their idols do. Young Aussies continue to be physically intimidating, young Desi cricketers continue to throw around casual racism, and young West Indians will keep making 'your mom' jokes.
If cricketers around the world could agree that some topics are off limits, and some behaviours are unacceptable, then we will have fewer nasty incidents.
But the first step is to see what 'Sledging' means to everyone, and what the general consensus on it is.