Out of the unprecedented actions of Mohammed Siraj in objecting to the behaviour of a group at the 2021 Sydney Test has emerged a discussion worth having about the rights and responsibilities of the modern live fan. Yet it is also almost impossible to generalise about them. Crowds are diverse; they are fickle; they are volatile. They do not merely observe the play; they observe one another, and unite or differ. They like to be noticed; they can also object to it. There is also in Australia an ancient tradition of raucous demotic demonstration, even in cricket, and especially at the Sydney Cricket Ground. It was the scene of our first riot in 1879. It was the scene, 50 years ago, of the first abandonment of a Test field due to a physical altercation with a player, England’s John Snow.
A hundred years ago, meanwhile, there was another incident in an Ashes Test which has long fascinated me – and which affords some parallels with l’affaire Siraj. An English amateur vice-captain, Rockley Wilson, wrote an article for London’s Daily Express deploring the behaviour of a Sydney crowd towards his teammate Jack Hobbs, whom they had heckled for his slow movement in the field when he was publicly known to be suffering a leg strain. There might then have been no internet, but there was a lively trade in cables to Australia of sections of the Fleet Street press, and Wilson’s comments were quickly played back to their subject. An account in Melbourne’s Herald gives the flavour of the response when Wilson came out to bat.
Everywhere else round the ground thoughts were forcibly expressed. “Liar! Liar! Liar!” roared the spectators. The roar became louder and louder as Wilson neared the batting crease. “What about your lying cable?” was called as Wilson went to the end at which the bowling began. When Wilson took strike… There was a long babel of noise – “Why don’t you play the game?” “Hook him on the jaw, Warwick.” “Hit him on the head, Gregory, and wake him up.” “Never mind the wicket, Gregory, crack him.”
This worked a charm. Wilson, clearly unsettled, smartly got outstumped, amid widespread schadenfreude. But then, as The Herald continued, something curious happened.
Hobbs’ name appeared on the scoring board… When he did appear, there was a scene never before approached on the Sydney Cricket Ground. People stood and cheered frantically, the clapping was tremendous, and all round the ground three cheers for Hobbs were called for, and spontaneously given… and continued long after. The members and the grandstand and the hill patrons were all in it.
What was this? A tacit admission that Wilson had pricked their consciences? A desire to be seen as magnanimous in their own and English eyes? Illustrative of people's innate desire to join in with the prevailing sentiment? Different spectators that day would probably have given different answers.
In those days, of course, we were most sensitive to English sensibilities, and also English condescension. Sport, like Australia, was a monoculture; it loomed large and reinforced the status quo. Times have changed, in some respects, our attitudes to crowds have not kept up with their growing complexity. What transpired during the Third Test involved a dark-skinned cricketer with a poor background in a rich team from a country both stunningly rich and terribly poor.
The shame is that the incident immediately bogged down in a mindless literalism, led by the “you-ca n’t-say-anything-anymore” crowd who demanded a transcript featuring explicit racial epithets, otherwise it’s all WOKE, FAKE NEWS etc. It is not a particularly deep reading of the scenario.
For a start, the Indian objection is cumulative. It is due to the long-term boorishness of Sydney crowds. They were invited to report an instance if they heard such; Siraj did. And frankly, who would willingly soak up such prolonged stupidity? Any reader who thinks so is invited to forward their work address: I'll be happy to follow them all day, shouting a drunken joke about their name, taking pleasure in their misfortune and discomfiture.
For another thing, racial epithets are not a precondition of racism. On the contrary, racism can be most pernicious where it is politest. The majority judgments in Plessy v Ferguson, the foundational documents of American segregation, are superbly eloquent; the terms of the Wannsee Protocol for the “Preparation of the Final Solution of the European Jewish Question” are smoothly bureaucratic; the mumbo jumbo of eugenics masked itself with a tone of science and learning.
There is also such a thing as racism of tone. A fair-skinned person addressing a dark-skinned person with a note of contempt or mockery carries an awful weight of history. The fair-skinned person is unlikely to grasp this, having never had to think otherwise, having never had to suffer being stereotyped or derided merely on the basis of their complexion. They may not intend offence – most, I suspect, would recoil at the idea. But it would cost them nothing to consider how they might be heard.
Now for some whataboutisms. What about the Barmy Army and their treatment of Steve Smith and David Warner in England in 2019? Yes, it was disgustingly stupid; it also ruined the Edgbaston Test for many fans, English as well as Australian. The Barmy Army is more sinned against than sinning, but they took this demonstration of allegiance far too far, and should have been more consistently called out on it. Good. I’m glad we had this little chat.
What about the young men whose behaviour was called out at the SCG? Were they not “scapegoated”? This objection is not unreasonable. They may well have been held responsible for the misdeeds of others, and singled out because of the thinness of the crowd, for on other days their chants and cries might have been submerged in the general hubbub. Yet they appear to have suffered no reputational damage. No media jackals are in pursuit; no PC mob has accused them of cultural appropriation for wearing Hawaiian shirts.
We do not know who they are. We do not know where they went, although one report is that they were simply encouraged to move elsewhere. It is hard, therefore, to argue that their civil liberties were infringed. Their treatment, at least so far, appears to have been perfectly moderate and proportional.
What about Yabba? Yabba, for those who don’t know, was the nickname of SH Gascoigne, a Balmain rabbitoh who, through the 1920s and 1930,s was the personification of Australian barracking, drawing crowds to the Hill simply for his own booming voice and acerbic wit.
In 2008, he was commemorated in a bronze cast in the Victor Trumper Stand. “By today’s juvenile standards,” erupted a heckler of this column a couple of days ago, “it’s a wonder they haven’t demolished the statue of Yabba.”
This is perfectly bogus. Yabba loved cricket. He patronised Test matches and grade games alike. He drank little; he did not swear or curse. His declared enemies were boring batsmen (“Whoa! He’s bolted”) and inaccurate bowling (“Your length is lousy but you bowl a good width”). He ribbed everyone alike; he developed strong affinities for visiting players like Patsy Hendren, Arthur Gilligan and the aforementioned Jack Hobbs. When Hobbs played his last Test in Australia, he made a point of going to the Hill to shake Yabba’s hand.
Yabba, according to Richard Cashman’s canonical treatise on Australian cricket spectating, “Ave a Go, Yer Mug!”, even liked women’s cricket when introduced to it and refrained from his usual boisterousness. “Why should I?” he asked. “The ladies are playing all right for me. This is cricket, this is. Leave the girls alone.” Some readers will probably regard this as making him unbearably woke.
So Yabba is under no threat at all. In fact, we could all do with being a bit more like him, he who supported honest effort in good spirit by whomever caught his eye, setting an example of seeing through the cricketer to the cricket itself.
One last thing: what goes around comes around. Remember Rockley Wilson? He went on to teach at Winchester, where one of his students was none other than Douglas Jardine. When Jardine was appointed England’s captain ahead of the Bodyline series, he confessed a deep foreboding. “We shall win the Ashes,” Wilson prophesied. “But we may lose a Dominion.” He wasn’t far off.
Excerpted with permission from Indian Summers: Australia versus India, Cricket’s Battle of the Titans, Gideon Haigh, Westland.
