September 11, 2008 by Prasanna
In my experience, one of the first things you notice about Aussies is how nice they are. They cheerfully wish the bus driver, the operator at the super market counter and apologize to you even when you bump into them with your trolley. I guess an average Aussie uses the sorry-thank you combo at least 50 times in a day. I don’t mean to generalize, but in my experience, they are great people to be around.
And then the cricket season starts. The politeness and niceness seems to evaporate in the heat of summer. A special breed of Aussies, answering to the name ‘cricketers’ become the torch bearers of this apparently great tradition of cricket, called sledging. In fact, there are talks of issuing R rating for all future
interviews featuring Mathew Hayden.
To be fair, it is not all of these cricketers, there are still the likes of Adam Gilchrist and Brett Lee who stay away from these behaviors. One only has to look at the
footage of Sachin Tendulkar walking into the ground, to see the respect Aussie crowd has for overseas cricketers.
I would like to talk about one particular overseas cricketer, who has been a target of the unanimous animosity of Australian cricketers, crowd and media – Muttiah Muralidharan. Since the day, Darrel Hair called Murali for throwing in 1995, his career has been marked with controversy and more often than not, Australia has been involved.
Most recently, on the day
Muralidharan clasped the wicket of Paul Collingwood to overtake Warne as the highest wicket-taker in test cricket, this is what an Australian newspaper had to say – “He doesn’t deserve it”. It doesn’t get any blunter than that, and that was the headline of the article announcing Murali’s record to fellow Aussies. This to me was the tragic climax to the decade long struggle.
Now that the race is at last over, here is hoping we take the lessons and move on.
You are playing it too hard when your loss is not graceful, and you are not playing it fair when a casual blogger has to remind you of it ! 
Category Adam Gilchrist, Australia, cricket, hard and fair, Matthew Hayden, muralidhan throwing, Muttiah Muralidharan, Sachin Tendulkar, spirit of cricket, Sri Lanka | Tags: | 8 Comments
August 20, 2008 by Prasanna
It’s 11 pm on friday night and the partying has only just started. She is tall, blonde and has had one too many slices of pizza from the dinner they had down at La Porchetta. She signals to her boy friend, who is waiting to get a drink. They will have to drive out to some service station to use the washroom, the one in the club being almost always occupied at this time.
By the time they drive upto the service station she is.. well, busting to go. Asking the boy friend to wait for her in the shop, she runs gingerly towards the washroom, throwing a side long glance to find a skinny Indian fellow behind the counter. Now, she hates to use these public washrooms and never uses them unless she definitely has to. As soon as she enters the washroom she is reminded rather immediately, why she hates them so much. Its very badly maintained, is over-used on friday nights by the many youngsters coming down from the club much like her and most frustratingly the tissues have been used up. Now she has to go all the way into the shop, ask for the tissues, wait for the guy at the counter to get them and… aaah, why today ??
As she awkwardly half runs towards the counter, the Indian guy smiles nervously at her, greeting. “The washroom has run out of tissues“. A statement. She does not find the need to ask for some action explicitly.. because it is rather obvious. The guy at the counter does not go anywhere, doesnt grab a tissue from beneath the counter – he simply looks puzzled. Now, why would he look puzzled? She is pretty sure he heard her right, it is rather quite in the store. She repeats herself impatiently to be sure. The same look – if anything he looks a bit more puzzled now, and may be slightly alarmed. She starts to fear he might not speak any english at all, when he looks as if he might have had some new realization. “I have only just started working here, and I have no idea where the tissues are. so.. “, he looks around the counter, grabs a box of.. facial tissues, holds it out for her, rose flavored and all.
Now, she could shout, scream and throw a tantrum at the outrageousness, but for the little emergency she is in. She quickly evaluates her options – looks the other way at the boy friend, who is still getting a drink on the other side of the store oblivious of the whole scene, looks at the guy at the counter, grabs the box and runs away for the washroom… never to be seen again around the service station….
Category Anecdote, Australia, Immigrants, Immigration | Tags: | 2 Comments
