Lay off Australian cricketers in India, they’ve done nothing wrong

They’re in the same category as Australian scientists, educators, engineers, doctors or management consultants.

Little had been heard from Australians in the IPL until Michael Slater spoke up

There are about 9000 Australian citizens in India. Not quite 40 of them are cricketers, coaches, commentators or officials involved in the Indian Premier League. All have now been threatened with imprisonment should they seek to return home.

Yet the emotions they occasion are mixed. Many of the same people who feel some simpatico with the plight of Australians abroad are vehemently of the view that the cricketers have made their own enseamed bed and must lie in it. Why should sportsmen be special? Why should they seek preferential treatment?

Here’s the thing, though: they haven’t been. In fact, precious little had been heard from them until Michael Slater’s execration of Scott Morrison on Monday night.

An exception was Chris Lynn’s loosely-worded thought-bubble on April 27 about departing India on a charter flight, and even then this was not a demand for instant repatriation or for special treatment save in the straightforwardly factual sense that vaccinated cricketers coming from a strictly-quarantined environment would not pose the same threat to biosecurity protocols as others. Lynn also conceded: “I know there are people worse off than us … We are not asking for short cuts and we signed up knowing the risks.”

It was unsurprising when Kane Richardson and Adam Zampa took the option of leaving Royal Challengers Bangalore in order to return to Australia. Richardson has recently become a father; Zampa has twice had to cancel his wedding due to COVID.

What was surprising was some mischievous and tendentious reporting, including by the ABC, that the pair had “exploited a loophole” by flying home via Doha, as though they had done something sneaky or underhanded.

In fact, the pair were booked before Morrison’s border closure and travelled Qatar Airlines simply because of the general scarcity of flights. They are now serving fortnight isolations just like everyone.

The general attitude of Australian players in the IPL was expressed a few days ago by Glenn Maxwell, with studious moderation, on the Final Word podcast.

Maxwell said not only that he was content to stay in the IPL, trusting in the integrity of the RCB bio-bubble, but to remain afterwards if that was what it took to return to Australia: “We’re just hoping to find a way home at some stage. If we have to wait a bit longer, so be it. … We’re certainly not looking for preferential treatment.”

Maxwell said that the crisis was “confronting” despite his relatively safe vantage. His fiancee is Indian, with family in that country; so, of course, are the majority of his teammates.

“There’s been a few guys who’ve already told us that one or more members of their family’s got COVID and is a bit sick at the moment,” Maxwell reported. “So it’s certainly hitting close to home in our franchise … COVID’s not selective, if it’s around there’s a chance you’re going to get it.”

Strangely, Maxwell’s entirely reasonable comments don’t seem to have been widely picked up, perhaps because they do not serve the bogus narrative of prima donna millionaire cricketers trying to clamber aboard the last chopper out of Saigon etc.

Slater’s remarks do strike that chord — inevitably they have achieved wide currency. But no matter who uttered them, they represent a totally legitimate position: far from it being “absurd”, as Morrison claims, his decision does endanger the lives of Australian citizens.

That’s not Slater’s or my opinion; it’s that of the chief medical officer, who advised the government that among the potential outcomes of the border closure were “the risk of serious illness without access to health care, the potential for Australians to be stranded in a transit country, and in a worst-case scenario, deaths”.

It is hardly outrageous to argue that our people — whether they’re Slater, or Australian-born teachers shuttered in a house in Bangalore, or Indian-born Australian citizens trying to protect vulnerable family members in Mumbai — should not suffer because this government runs a hotel quarantine system with all the integrity of a colander. It is certainly not an argument for preferential treatment; it is an argument for the same treatment.

Whether you approve or not, furthermore, cricket is an important part of the relations between Australia and India, symbolically and financially. Australian cricketers who play there are in the same category as Australian scientists, educators, engineers, doctors or management consultants who ply their trades in one of this country’s five biggest trading partners.

They’re all entitled to profit by their talents. They are all entitled to the same considerations, protections and decencies.

Rather than getting irate with Slater, Morrison might want to reflect on his unctuous blandishments where counterpart Narendra Modi are concerned. “Great to talk to my good friend PM @narendramodi again”; “Spoke with my good friend PM @ScottMorrisonMP today.”

Those emetic tweets were shortly after Modi bragged that India had “saved the world, entire humanity, from a major tragedy by effectively controlling COVID”. Hubris, say hello to nemesis …

Hell, it’s only three weeks since old mate Modi was campaigning in West Bengal, boasting about the huge size of the maskless crowds, even as daily COVID infections rose past 250,000 on their way to today’s 400,000-plus.

We also all might reflect on the decision of the Board of Control for Cricket in India, with its obnoxious BJP proxies in charge, to press on with the IPL in India when the option of playing in the UAE was available. How much trust can be placed in the BCCI’s capacity to stage the T20 World Cup later this year?

So let’s get a sense of proportion, shall we? If we want to start allotting blame for this worsening fiasco, Australian cricketers rank well down the list.