Wednesday, January 16, 2008
BLOODLETTING COMPLETED
Peter Roebuck wishes Australians and Indians could just get along:
At last the bloodletting has been completed and it’s time to get on with the cricket. Beyond argument, the debate sparked by Anil Kumble’s devastating remark has been fierce but it also has been productive.
So Kumble’s to blame, is he? Roebuck’s own publishers seem to think Peter had something to do with this bloodletting “debate”, which Roebuck was talking up even after his notorious column:
ABC cricket commentator Peter Roebuck says there are still serious doubts about next week’s Perth Test going ahead.
Roebuck says there is little chance of the two captains being part of any conciliatory talks.
“These two sides are so far apart right now that I think the Perth Test has got no more than a 40 per cent chance of taking place ...” he said.
Good call, sir! About his reaction following the last Test, Roebuck now writes:
To my mind, the fifth day resembled events at the Oval in 2005. Readers may recall the exception taken in this column to the grandiose excesses laid on by the host when supposed bad light stopped play on the Sunday of that fifth and final Test of an epic series. Wild-eyed supporters cheered this apparently regrettable and certainly idiotic turn of events and the organisers sent out a lady to lead the crowd in renditions of Land of Hope and Glory and Rule Britannia. The triumphalism was objectionable and the point was forcefully made in papers on both sides of the world. Thereabouts, your correspondent was not quite so easily cast as an English snob, a designation wider than Devon Malcolm’s loosest delivery!
What a snobbish thing to say about Devon Malcolm. And in conclusion:
Everyone needs to move beyond the reprisal mentality.
Writes the guy who called for one quarter of the Australian team to be fired. Unbelievable.
UPDATE. India cleaning up in Perth; Australia 5/61, Instant Karma 2/4.