The Australians’ Pawar play

Anil Dharker

Most of us now know through innumerable TV replays that first Ponting used an expressive gesture of all ten fingers to indicate to the Indian Board President, “The trophy, give us the trophy.” And was followed by Damien Martyn ‘nudging’ our agriculture minister off the platform so that the team could be photographed without his rotund presence. We also know that this soon became an ‘incident’ and there was such a barrage of criticism that the Australians have now apologised.

Look at the TV footage and photographs of the prize distribution ceremony and you will clearly see that it was all playful fun: the Australians were on a high after winning and were laughing with Pawar (not at him). The BCCI President entered into the spirit of the moment, too, so that when Ponting gestured to him, he gestured right back, implying “Come and get the trophy.” When asked for his reactions then, he dismissed the incident as not worthy of being blown out of proportion.

But this is India, so it was blown out of proportion. Ex-cricketers gave angry reactions, an unfortunate donkey that has never played cricket found ‘Damien Martyn’ painted on his side, NCP activists threatened to ‘go to court’ and even Sharad Pawar changed his first, spontaneous reaction to the considered one of saying “This was uncivilised behaviour.”

Was it? Or was it a clash of civilisations? The physical evidence shows that the Australians meant no disrespect: they were merely being friendly. “Hiya matey!” is apparently what they said to Pawar. A real matey, one that was of their age and inclination, would almost certainly have been hugged or backslapped in an exuberant way. The fact that this was not done to Pawar was out of respect, Australian style.

Many in India would ask the question: Would they dare behave like this with their own minister in Australia? The answer: they wouldn’t dare. They just would. Because that’s the way Australians are brought up. To be irreverent, not to kow-tow to authority, to treat everyone as equal.

We, on the other hand, are brought up differently. Showing respect to elders is almost a credo: An average Australian, for example, will not understand why an Indian will jump up when his father (or uncle) comes into the room. He will, in fact, understand even less why the Indian will hide his cigarette and rush out to stub it. Even when Sachin Tendulkar is an old man, he will rise to greet his school coach, and address him respectfully as ‘Sir’. Not only that, he will refer to the coach even when he is not present as ‘Achrekar sir’.

Do these cultural dissimilarities make the difference between winning and losing? Australia’s success in sports is not just in cricket, but also in hockey, athletics, swimming, rugby, tennis, squash and many other sports, at a rate disproportionate to its small population. You can ascribe some of the success to the weather, to the availability of facilities and space plus a general sporting tradition, but at the top level of any sport, it is temperament and confidence which makes the ultimate difference. Where does that originate if not from an attitude to life? Or, as we now all say, from Attitude?

To digress a little — the recent successes of India Inc. have been through a continuing process of organic growth, where a company grows through its own internal expansions. Even the recent scenario of inorganic growth (ie. through acquisitions) has been through friendly take-overs. The Tata group, in fact, has said that it’s not interested in hostile take-overs. The only major instance of a hostile take-over was Mittal’s acquisition of Arcelor, but Lakshmi Mittal lives in the West, and his rise to successes only happened when he left India. So possibly his Attitude is that of an outsider.

Is it possible then that our upbringing of respect and distance makes us shy away from eyeball-to-eyeball confrontation which marks competition, whether in the boardroom or in modern sport? If so, our future sports successes will be restricted to chess and golf, the first being an intellectual exercise where you look at the board and not at the opponent, while in golf you play against the course and not your fellow competitors.

In other words, apology or no apology, expect more of the same ‘boorishness’ from the Australians at the next championship event. And also be sure that our chaps will never nudge, push or wag a finger at the chief guest at any event. Actually, they won’t even have to, because they won’t be on the podium.