Dan Christian defends stand against PM

Dan Christian has defended his criticism of the Prime Minister and revealed how his teammates resolved to take a knee before Big Bash League matches.

Sydney Sixers veteran Dan Christian stoked the Australia Day change-the-date debate. Picture: Getty Images

Dan Christian has defended his criticism of the Prime Minister and revealed how his teammates resolved to take a knee before Big Bash League matches as controversy rages around Cricket Australia’s choice to discourage use of the term Australia Day around January 26.

The veteran Indigenous player explained that the decision by teammates to take a knee before Sydney Sixers’ BBL games was not specific support for the Black Lives Matter movement but a desire to draw attention to the victims of racism.

The Sydney Thunder team had already stopped using the term Australia Day in previous years, but the call from Cricket Australia to move away from the phrase sparked the latest controversy. Other franchises have objected to the change.

Christian, 27, said Scott Morrison was out of touch when he called on the sporting body to stay out of politics and later compared the lot of convicts to the suffering of Aboriginal people.

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“His comments the other day about Cricket Australia getting involved in politics where we’ve all seen him get involved in cricket and rugby league and whatever other sport is going on and his comments about the people on the boat having a bad day when they arrived in Australia as well — I though those comments were a little bit out of touch,” Christian said on The Australian’s Cricket Et Cetera podcast.

“I don’t comment too much on anything really, let alone political stuff, but that rubbed me up the wrong way.

“Cricket Australia have been doing some fantastic work, particularly in the past 12 months with the direction they are going with Indigenous issues and racism, so I have been really pleased with the direction they are going in and more than happy to support them.”

Christian triggered a reactionary pile-on from politicians and right-wing commentators when he suggested Morrison “read the room” and said, “there’ll be millions of kids watching our BBL game on the 26th of January, and they’ll see us taking a knee against racism, and promoting inclusion for all. Take note.”

The son of a Wiradjuri man went on to explain that he wanted an Australia Day “where we celebrate what makes Australia the best country in the world”.

A number of Indigenous sports stars including former Test player Jason Gillespie, the Melbourne Renegades’ Josh Lalor and Rabbitohs star Latrell Mitchell have all come out in support of the stance taken by cricket.

Christian believes the debate about Australia Day is similar to that about gay marriage and is confident most Australians would eventually accept a change of date because it was more inclusive.

“Speaking for the guys in my team here at the Sixers, it is not that they don’t support Australia Day, I just feel a majority of the people are not really bothered one way or another. Subsequently if they are not bothered, if people want to change they are happy to go with the changes,” he told the podcast.

“It is probably not too dissimilar to the gay marriage debate, I don’t think that people are that bothered by it, but if it makes people happy who want to support it then let’s go for it.

“If something makes someone happy and it makes someone’s life better we are generally happy to support it.”

Christian’s Sydney Sixers BBL side resolved to take a knee before games at the start of the season.

He described what it was like as an Indigenous man to see his teammates and opposition joining the gesture of solidarity with the victims of racism.

“It is a pretty unifying feeling, we chatted about it a lot pre-BBL, we definitely wanted to do something, we felt that something had to be done based on what has gone on around the world in the last six months ... we spoke about wearing black armbands in support of those that had lost their lives due to racism.

“Carlos Brathwaite (West Indian Sixers member) spoke about it very passionately, about wanting to take a knee and we all more than happily jumped on board as something we wanted to do.

“It is not so much in particular supporting the BLM movement it is more to us a recognition and acknowledgment that people around the world are still being affected by racism and we just want that to stop basically or at least the conversation can be had so that people’s lives can be made better.”

Christian has played for Australia and led two Indigenous teams on tours of Britain where they followed in the footsteps of the first Aboriginal team to play Tests there in 1868.