The Symonds affair

Being a Mumbai'ite, I have always taken pride in the city's lively attitude and hostile receptions at cricket fields. But this episode has brought much disgust to an average Mumbai fan. I was there in the North stand in 2003 when the chants "Dillon is a bastard, aye-o, aye-o" went on for 4 consecutive days. I thought that was the toughest test for a cricketer, being in a foreign country, on a field surrounded by ~50,000 fans cheering for their home side, standing alone in the "fine leg" or "long on" region (that’s where the North stand is placed) with no team mates in view for around 40 yards and spectators wanting to get every bit of your attention by calling you names or performing hand arts (and if you respond to their chants then congratulations, you are a dead guy), to top it all if your team is losing on that day, then it can go from bad to worse in a blink. Andrew Symonds was part of a similar tactic from the spectators, which is to "harass and agitate at least one member of the touring party till he breaks and succumbs to the pressure". They try it with many team members and when someone starts responding (by complaining or reacting on the field) they know that they found their guy for the tour. This was the first and biggest mistake by Symonds & Co. They shouldn’t have made this episode public, because now every single cricket fan in the country (literate enough to read newspapers and hear the radio) would know about how to get under Symonds' skin. As far as the actual racist comments, it’s really sad to know that the authorities could not take a firm action on the field to stop the culprits. They should have repeated announcements in the stands in multiple languages to keep the crowd informed that one such mistake could lead to a good amount of time behind bars.