Thursday, January 31, 2008

Cultural Differences Part II

I commented a while back about the cultural differences between our countries (Cultural Differences in Cricket) , and how this could possibly lead to the problems we are sadly seeing now. At the time I was thinking mostly of on-field behaviour (i.e. sledging versus team appealing), however, I have been thinking recently about off-field cultural differences as well.

I am probably being overly simplistic in this viewpoint, but in the past few decades the three teams that most often threaten legal action are Sri Lanka, India and Pakistan. In contrast, I don't remember the West Indies making similar legal threats to try and win a point. Is this a cultural difference? Is legal action very commonplace as a threat in India etc? Legal action in sport in Australia is fairly rare - I don't know about other countries.

Is this another example of the cultural differences between our respective countries? I am not trying to start an argument about who is right or wrong, and this isn't particularly to do with the recent sagas. It is more an opportunity for us to explore whether this is another one of the issues that sees both sides misunderstanding the motives of the other.

13 comments:

Uncle J rod said...

Lucky americans don't play.

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Samir Chopra said...

Stuart, I'm not sure cultural differences will be very illuminating in this case. Speaking from an Indian perspective, Indians are very cynical about the legal process, associating it with long, drawn-out procedures that do not result in justice being done. I would see the use of legal action rather as a code for saying "Can't you see this really, really bothers us? What do we have to do to get through to you?"


Incidentally, its interesting you mention sledging (I remember that wonderful discussion we had on these pages some time ago). For years, Indian players would complain about sledging and nothing would be done about it. The most famous example was Jarman (as match referee) telling V. Raju (when he was abused by Brian McMillan) that he simply should have retaliated. A whole generation of Indian youngsters grew up (I'd say circa 1990 onwards) watching their heroes just cop it sweet on the telly. Plenty of pent-up vitriol there!

Cheers,
Samir

Mark said...

Samir - are you seriously suggesting that Indians don't sledge?!!

The ones I've had the pleasure of playing with certainly do!!

arjwiz said...

Everyone sledges. Only the weak complain about it.

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Jrod said...

Stuart, are you ever coming back my friend?

Stuart said...

I'm back! For a while anyway :)

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