Nerve Endings Firing Away

For a change, I am glad with IPL’s decision to ban Harbhajan Singh for the rest of the currently ongoing Twenty20 tournament. Further more, Harbhajan stands to lose nearly 2.67 crores for being such a sore loser. I’m sorry to see Mumbai Indians whom I naturally support in the IPL league lose a player but I offer no excuses against the IPL decision. Slapping Sreesanth deserved the harshest possible penalty and such actions must be dealt in a manner that shows no-tolerance toward violence on the field. Some have argued that Sreesanth brought it upon himself by needlessly taunting Mumbai’s tailenders and mocked Harbhajan Singh when he walked up to him to shake hands after the match. But yet no matter how rude or mocking Sreesanth was, violence was not the response Harbhajan was looking for. He could have easily mocked him back or used the words he allegedly used against Symonds thus making his mother proud once again.

This incident now puts the entire ugly racism incident in Australia not too long ago in fresh perspective. Perhaps Harbhajan did in fact racially taunt Symonds and later hid behind the maa-ki monkey excuse. At that time, he had the support of the Indian team and the fans back home who riled against whites treating Indians unfairly. But this time around, there was no such excuse or any nationalistic fan base to hide behind. To make matters worse, he hit his own national team player. I would not be surprised if he had got similar support from the fans had he had hit a foreign player. Would the IPL’s decision be just as swift and harsh had it been some Australian player who got slapped? I would like to think so but before that happened, the media would have had a field day in pitting Australian sledging tactics against Harbhajan’s boiling point. In this case, there was no scope of spin with both players involved being immature, childish, and more importantly, Indian. For the sake of IPL and its future, I’m glad that we had such an incident this early in the league so that in the future players will think twice before resorting to violence.

Now if only Mumbai fans will find some reason to hope that its team doesn’t lose any more matches. I hate to say this but guess we really do need Tendulkar. Mumbai is turning out to be the NY Yankees of today but only in terms of its franchise cost.