Disgusting antics overshadow Green shoots

Indian players along with Australia's captain Tim Paine wait while fans are ejected from the SCG for alleged abuse of Indian bowler Mohammed Siraj Picture: AFP

There are many pleasing and vivid images in India’s 71-Year Test, a pictorial history of India’s cricket tours of Australia launched during the Sydney Test. But none are quite so happy as those capturing Indian cricketers on the touring parts of their tours, being welcomed, heralded and embraced.

Images of Indian supporters Down Under date back, perhaps surprisingly, to the 1960s. But the enthusiasm takes off in this most recent generation: we see disembodied hands stretching to touch Cheteshwar Pujara, fans posing for selfies with a beaming Virat Kohli, and Sachin Tendulkar on his famous pilgrimage to the home of Sir Donald Bradman.

If the book is ever updated, sad to say, there will be few such images of the summer of 2020-21.

Is it possible to tour a country without actually visiting it? For that has been the fate of this admirable Indian team, pinned down and penned up since their first fortnight’s quarantine, far from home, cut off from their families, and a plaything of overmighty bureaucrats, absurdly execrated for a minuscule quarantine breach in a country that has long since lost any sense of proportion in dealing with COVID-19.

In the foreword to India’s 71-Year Test, India’s coach Ravi Shastri, a visitor to these shores for 35 years, calls Australia his favourite touring destination: “The patronage of the crowds and the big grounds contributed to the ambience. The women are wonderful, the men are sporting and the beer is great.” One wonders whether he’ll now be able to convince Mohammad Siraj of this wholehearted endorsement.

It was Siraj who brought Sunday’s Test match to a standstill at 2:55pm, coming in from fine leg and with a wave of his arms signifying his weariness of hometown heckling from the Brewongle Stand.

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Was this heckling racist? Prepare for it to be minimised as “friendly banter”, and for jokes about lip-reading through masks. A certain proportion of cricket’s followers will defend to the death their right to abuse players from other countries in whatever terms they wish.

Bear in mind, however, that Sunday’s events came on top of crowd behaviours of which the Indian team complained after play on Saturday, whose reported content sounds more serious.

In any event, what we should be prepared to say is that it’s at least ungrateful, certainly distasteful and arguably disgusting to jeer or harangue this Indian team given what they have experienced in the summer of 2020-21 so that we comparatively fortunate Australians might have something to watch.

Cameron Green launches a shot into the stands Picture: AFP

Siraj is on his first tour. He is the son of an auto-rickshaw driver from Hyderabad. His father died six weeks ago; he remained on the tour rather than return for the funeral. As India’s national anthem played before play on Thursday, a single tear was observed descending from his eye.

Otherwise, of course, we hardly know him; we cannot get close enough to do so, nor he to us. What we have seen, though, speaks well of him: he has toiled manfully on flat wickets in Melbourne and Sydney; he dropped his bat and hastened to the aid of Cameron Green when the young all-rounder suffered his concussion in the tour match at the SCG.

Siraj is also a Muslim, an increasingly problematic identity in his own nation, where chauvinism and sectarianism has a tightening grip. The scope for misunderstanding is huge.

The Indian team, we are told, are fed up. They glimpse life going round them that looks close to normal – huge crowds in shopping plazas, on beaches, in pubs and restaurants, even as they’re confined to hotel rooms, whose walls must by now be closing in.

They’re confused. Hell, I’m confused and I live here. Restrictions change every day, as governments make it up as they go along, playing politics with public safety, treating their own people as pawns, and our cricket visitors barely as draughts.

Tensions in this series were “starting to boil”, Tim Paine admitted on the eve of the Test. Not even he, the home captain enjoying nothing but support, has been immune – witness his uncharacteristic remonstration with Blocker Wilson on Saturday. And nobody’s calling him anything but “skipper”.

In Adelaide and Melbourne, there were pockets of exuberant Indian support in the crowd. Here, probably thanks to the hot spot status of Sydney’s west, those voices have been fewer. Australian fans have had the ground largely to themselves, and perhaps have mistaken this for licence.

There has been nothing to leaven the visitors’ sense of isolation either, although Paine, to his credit, kept the Indian team company during their representations to the on-field officials, and while security was consulted.

The shame was that the incident overshadowed another spirited and well-contested day of Test cricket, Cameron Green growing in stature with each passing over – not bad for a figure already 200cm.

For one so tall, Green keeps solid contact with terra firma, taking a long stride and getting his nose over the ball, punching strongly in the V but quick to reprove error of length with a full-blooded pull. He deferred only to Bumrah, who somehow nearly went wicketless despite repeatedly beating the outside edge, and somehow also kept smiling throughout.

But against everyone else, he stayed busy and even bold. He used his feet to bomb Ashwin over wide-mid on, and with a 360-degree swing thrice deposited Siraj beyond the long-on boundary. I dare say that this also contributed to Siraj’s disenchantment; the irony was that the 10-minute break in proceedings probably thwarted Green’s ambitions for a maiden century.

As time ran short with the declaration imminent, Green v Bumrah climaxed: a straight drive to the rope, a pump-action pull onto the terraces, and a nick to the keeper. The crowd united in appreciation – all save those who had already been ejected.