Sunday, February 17, 2008
TOO WHITE
Scuttling across territory previously pecked at by Malcolm Knox, here’s Social Justice XI captain Peter Roebuck:
Over the years, Australian cricket has been dominated by players of Anglo-Saxon extraction ... A few [Aboriginal] pace bowlers emerged only to be drummed out of the game ...
Apart from these pacemen and sporadic appearances from dusky batsmen, the national team has remained tanned, leathery but resolutely lilywhite.
An apology is owed to part-Aboriginal Jason Gillespie. (By the way, Australian cricket journalism is even more Anglo-dominated. Roebuck could do something about this by going back to England.) Following his trashing of hateful white Australia - headlined “Lily-livered lilywhites have held cricket back” - Roebuck ends on a puzzling note:
Australia is advancing. A bright-eyed 17-year-old girl is making her Test debut in Bowral. Aboriginal sides from every corner of the country are taking part in the Imparja Cup in Alice Springs. And a government led by a Mandarin speaker has just issued a formal apology to the first tenants of this vast, hostile continent. It is all part of the same process, a long-awaited and stiffly resisted move towards enlightenment.
Ellyse Perry, the girl Roebuck cites as a sign of Australian advancement - ie, a reduction of lilywhiteness - is whiter than Roebuck.