“Told umpires we won’t play till they take action”- Rahane, Ashwin open up on racism from Sydney crowd
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R Ashwin, Mohammed Siraj, Ajinkya Rahane
India had won the Australia Test series with 2-1 in a dramatic circumstances and even though it’s almost a year-and-a-half, the memories and incidents happened there are still fresh. Mohammed Shami and Jasprit Bumrah were racially abused in Sydney Test by the spectators.
After the end of the third day’s play in New Year’s Day Test, Indian cricketers told the match officials about the racist comments but still it continued the next morning. Match was suspended for ten minutes and a group of players were evicted from the stands and then only the match started.
“[We] insisted on getting the abusers out of the ground,” told Ajinkya Rahane to the umpires. Rahane was also the captaining the team at that time due to the absence of Virat Kohli.
The umpires asked the players to go back to the dressing room if they don’t want to play, the Indian team wanted the abusers to be ejected from the crowd, after which, they will continue playing the Test.
“When Siraj again came to me [on the fourth day, after being abused the day before], I told the umpires that [they] need to take action and we won’t play till then,” said Ajinkya Rahane.
“The umpires [Paul Reiffel and Paul Wilson] said that you can’t stall the game and can walk out if you want. We said that we are here to play and not sit in the dressing room and insisted on getting the abusers out of the ground. It was important to support our colleague given the situation he had been through. What happened in Sydney was completely wrong.”
But it was courageous of Siraj to bring it up, says Ashwin
Veteran India spinner Ravichandran Ashwin said that he had experienced the same while playing in Australia. He then explained that racist comments are made because people feel they are part of a majority and so they comment on the minorities. He also named Sydney as the place where such incidents occurs frequently than in Adelaide and Melbourne and such this often gets nasty.
“I don’t think it has anything to do with a particular section of people in a particular country. Everywhere people do believe that they belong to a majority sort of a thing and they will have their way. And I think racism is one tip of it, where people believe that is a way of differentiation with someone. The only solution is better parenting and better awareness.
“Yes, it happened at that ground [SCG] and at that place [Australia] a lot more. But it was courageous of him [Siraj] to bring it up so at least a wider section of people know and the people sitting next to such people in the ground do better next time.
Ashwin then condemned racism because everywhere people are differentiating people on different grounds.
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Gouri Das
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