Need to educate sportspersons on what battles need to be taken up and what left alone

Mini KapoorIn his short Test career of only four previous outings so far, Moeen Ali had already given notice of his grit. At Leeds earlier this summer, England were chasing 350 to save the series against Sri Lanka. The 27-year-old remained not out on 108, while around him his teammates folded, not one of them even registering a half-century.At Southampton against India, his team did not really need him to contribute runs. They were already on their way to a huge innings total (eventually 569 for 7, declared). But in the course of his 12-run stint, Ali wore two wristbands and brought cricket to stare squarely at questions of where politics and sport intersect, what proclamations of solidarity may be acceptable on the field, and how the game's powers-that be could corrode its capacity to be a force for good.The England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) took the considered and, in the circumstances, correct view that while Ali did not alert them that he'd be wearing the bands ("Save Gaza" and "Free Palestine"), they would not subsequently restrain him from doing so. "Moeen has done nothing wrong," a spokesperson was quoted as saying, and the case was made that his was a humanitarian statement, not a political one. (It is not incidental that freeing of Palestinian Territories is written into the two-state solution Israel is anyway committed to, and Ali was hardly airing a revolutionary, incendiary or even secessionist message.)Moeen AliThe International Cricket Council (ICC) did not agree, and banned him from wearing the bands. If, therefore, it is the ICC's case that sport and politics do not mix, it does not wash. Certainly not when the Indian Premier League, treasure of the BCCI, which in turn controls the ICC, could be made to submit to not fielding Sri Lankan players in Chennai matches, thereby dishonouring sport's first responsibility to sportsmanship. No distilling of the spirit of the Basil D'Oliveira affair here! And this, after Pakistan's talented cricketers would find themselves unappealing and unworthy of a bid to IPL franchisees.Definitely not, in ECB's case, when a decade ago it chickened out over taking a call on whether to play a World Cup match in Mugabe's Zimbabwe by leaving it to the players. Nasser Hussain would later recall in his autobiography that it was "the most traumatic time" of his life.All of the above are terrible abdications by the BCCI and ECB. But the point is not that the cricket field become an open space for any and every slogan, but that the administrators need to be more responsive on why certain messaging is okay or not.Because on the field, in utterances of inclusion , sport has found its most convincing reason to be the public spectacle it is. Individual athletes have led the way. India's champion hockey players, as David Wallechinsky's Olympics almanacs remind us, may have had to march behind the British flag at the Berlin in 1936, but in the dressing room they gathered around the tricolour (then of the Indian National Congress). On the field at Mexico City in 1968, three men gave the 200 m sprint a nobility no amount of record-breaking by heroes like Michael Johnson and Usain Bolt could possibly match. When Americans Tommie Smith and John Carlos (gold and bronze) came to the medal ceremony barefooted and raised a blackgloved arm each in the Black Power salute, the International Olympic Committee was livid. The US Committee stood by them initially, but faced with the prospect of its other athletes being disqualified, it caved in. (The support Smith and Carlos got from silver medallist Peter Norman, an Australian, is stuff of spinetingling heroism.)It is said sportspersons are not ordinary people like you or me. But they are young, these exceptional men and women. With their performance, they take spectators out of our everyday worlds. When they push the envelope on what is the progressive thing to do, they-and, by extension, we-deserve to know exactly why not. And perhaps, the line between why so and why not may be better drawn when administrators articulate the reasons for their decisions. For one, it'd educate them on what battles must be taken up and what should be left alone.Published By: AtMigration Published On: Jul 31, 2014 23:22 IST--- ENDS ---

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Need to educate sportspersons on what battles need to be taken up and what left alone

ICC's caution to Moeen Ali and its separation of sport and politics do not wash.

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