Racism in sports

I thought we are moving forward from the dark ages of racism into much better era, but I guess we still aren't there. Just couple of days back, we had Dean Jones sacked in disgrace by Ten Sports from its commentary team. The offence - he made a racist comment against a South African Cricket Player.

The circumstances are actually more intriguing here. Apparently Dean, made the comment about Amla, during the break between the overs, a time where normally all the channels take an ad break. But it was'nt Dean's day. One channel did not seem to have taken the ad break, and so his comments were aired live, the South African board protested and Ten Sports promptly sacked him.

Now what we need to see here is why are such comments made in the first place. Dean claims that it was a rush of moment that he blurted out something and he did not really mean it. I sincerely hope what he is saying is true. Nobody other than him would know the truth. But then, commentrators and other personalities in the media, have a great responsibilty especially with live transmissions. I mean, have you tried being politically correct always. It is so difficult. So it is all the more a challenging job.

As far the incident, Jones seems to have apologized to great lengths to everybody including Amla, the board, the company and to all listeners. But then I hope he really means it. He was not a bad commentrator and would like to see him back in the commentry box, but defintely with no such thoughts as this.

And I support Ten Sports' prompt action and it defintely should reflect as a precedent to any such incidents in future.

Talking about racisim in sports, the recently held FIFA World Cup held in Germany emphasized so much on abolishing racism from sports. Sure, the Fatherland has come a long from days of Nazis. I was so happy at seeing the strong message being sent out with huge banners at the start of each of the matches. Kudos to FIFA and German organizers for chosing that as the theme for this year.