Much ado about Jadeja makes a mockery of fair Australian media traditions

Indian and Australian reporters at the MCG
Indian and Australian reporters at the MCG (PC: Subhayan)

RevSportz Comment

One of the most surprising aspects of the controversy surrounding Ravindra Jadeja’s media interaction in the build-up to the Boxing Day Test was the utterly one-eyed approach taken by the Australian media present. It was as if common sense had left the building and been replaced by conspiracy theories.

That it happened in Australia was even more eyebrow-raising. For more than a century, Australian sports journalism has been robust and objective for the most part. There have been few holy cows. Even Sir Donald Bradman, the greatest of them all, wasn’t immune to criticism.

On the 1930 tour of England, after an Australian businessman gifted Bradman a large sum of money following his triple-century in Leeds, Geoffrey Tebbutt, a journalist based out of Melbourne, was scathing of the legend’s refusal to even buy his teammates a round of drinks.

Just over half a century later, when a frazzled and under-pressure Greg Chappell asked Trevor, his younger brother, to bowl underarm off the last ball of an ODI final against New Zealand, Ian Chappell, by then a commentator for Channel 9, was heard saying: “No, Greg, no, you can’t do that.” It didn’t matter that Australia’s captain was his younger sibling, whom he had played alongside from backyard to baggy green. Elsewhere on television, Richie Benaud called it a ‘disgraceful performance’ and ‘one of the worst things I have ever seen done on a cricket field.’

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Ravindra Jadeja having a media interaction at the MCG
Ravindra Jadeja having a media interaction at the MCG (PC: X)

Ian Chappell was equally strident in his criticism of Steve Smith after Sandpapergate in Cape Town in 2018. He insisted that Smith couldn’t be restored captaincy even after serving his ban because he had lost the respect of his players.

The playing group as a whole had come under the late Peter Roebuck’s scanner in the aftermath of Monkeygate in Sydney in January 2008. On the pages of The Melbourne Age, Roebuck lambasted Ricky Ponting’s leadership, saying he had ‘turned a group of professional cricketers into a pack of wild dogs’. That wasn’t all. “It was the ugliest performance by an Australian side for 20 years,” he wrote. “The only surprising part of it is that the Indians have not already packed and gone home.

“It was a wretched and ill-mannered display and not to be endured from any side let alone an international outfit representing a proud sporting nation. Make no mistake, it is not only the reputation of these cricketers that has suffered — Australia itself has been embarrassed.”

That was what you tended to get from the Australian media, a few tabloids aside –
fairness. Whether it was Gideon Haigh praising Virat Kohli’s T20 artistry in a Mohali cauldron, or Peter Lalor appreciating Ravi Shastri and Kohli travelling to Phil Hughes’ funeral in country New South Wales, there was an ability to see the big picture. All we’ve seen with the Jadeja episode are small minds and a narrow worldview, which is a real shame coming from the country of Tebbutt, Benaud and Chappell.

Also Read: Australian media resorts to ‘dark arts’, targets Jadeja