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The Andrew Gale racism accusation has thrust player banter
once again into the spotlight. The OED defines banter as ‘the playful and
friendly exchange of teasing remarks’. The word had its time in the sun a few
decades ago, but is now among the most irritating in the language, along with
its own abbreviated form ‘bants’, largely due to its adoption by teenagers to
mean ‘hijinks’, or any kind of boisterous schadenfreude they deem ‘top bants’.
Banter has a lot to answer for, and cricket is sorely
afflicted. Sledging, some say, is part of the game. This I am prepared to
accept on the condition – and it’s a non-negotiable condition – that it is
funny.
South African batsman Daryl Cullinan is perhaps best
remembered as Shane Warne’s bunny. He once arrived at the crease to Warne
gloating that he’d been waiting two years for another chance to humiliate him,
to which Cullinan deliciously shot back: “Looks like you spent them eating.”
Portliness is often at the heart of a good sledge. My
brother-in-law once shouted from square-leg as I walked out to bat, “He’s
wearing a stomach pad!” which had the whole field in stitches, including me. He
was later delighted when I admitted that trying to think up a suitable riposte
was consuming most of my concentration when I spooned one up in the air, so his
sledge was directly responsible for my dismissal.
This kind of sledging seems to have gone out of fashion
these days, in favour of brainless abuse.
“Get ready for a broken f***ing arm,” was Michael Clarke’s
welcome to Jimmy Anderson last winter. Top bants, Michael. An army of ICC
lawyers proved unable to determine what Jimmy himself said to Ravi Jadeja this
summer, but we can be fairly confident it wasn’t a playful and friendly
exchange of teasing remarks.
We once played a much higher league side in a knockout cup,
where they spent our whole innings telling each of our batsmen in turn what
effing c-words we were. We found it rather baffling. Seven leagues above us,
yet the manifest superiority of their cricket was apparently insufficient.
If you strip the Andrew Gale / Ashwell Prince exchange of
anything that might be considered racist (ie where they were telling each other
to go) it amounts simply to this: Prince: “F*** off.” Gale: “You f*** off, you
f***er.” Top bants indeed. Devastating repartee. Like having Oscar Wilde and
Mark Twain out there.
It’s not racist, it’s just abuse. It’s pathetic, the kind of
playground name-calling that gets 15-year-olds detention. It’s embarrassing not
because it’s racist but because it’s just so base, so charmless, so utterly
devoid of wit or imagination.
In my view the ECB is wrong to pursue Gale for racism. But
if its intention is to draw attention to and stamp out such indefensible,
boorish, sub-prison-yard ‘banter’, then for once the ECB has my full-throated
support.
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