And this really has nothing to do with race. Really.

MAJAK Daw is a Sudanese migrant to Australia. People know about him because he is the first African to play Australian rules football. A member of the junior string of the North Melbourne football club — Werribee — Majak’s recruitment resulted in a good deal of positive publicity for the senior club that is not especially well-known for performing well on the field.

North Melbourne last won the AFL senior championship in 1999 when it had in its ranks a man considered the best Australian rules player ever – Wayne Carey. Since then the team has turned in indifferent performances year in and year out.

The degree of publicity Majak received grew even more when he was racially abused during a game in 2011. Newspaper and TV coverage was sympathetic to the young man who has seen his share of war in Sudan before he came to Australia.
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One-day cricket has become just another tamasha

AFTER more than 20 years, I finally went to the stadium to watch a one-day international, between India and Australia. I will never do so again.

In 1989, I watched Pakistan defeat India at Sharjah in a one-day tie; apart from the headache of sitting at ground-level and swallowing copious amounts of dust, the cricket was watchable. There were no distractions in the area I sat.

But the entire thing has now degenerated into farce. Louts of both sexes who seem intent on cramming themselves full of lager constitute a sizeable part of the crowd. There were Indians in large numbers, all equally loutish, and outdoing even the Nazis in jingoism.
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