Not Cricket

I’m not sure I quite understand the controversy surrounding the continuing cricket insult scandal. First, Harbhajan Singh was disciplined for calling Andrew Symonds a ‘monkey’, and now Matthew Hayden has been fined for calling Harbhajan Singh ‘an obnoxious weed’. Has anyone actually stopped to think that are not actually the worst insults ever uttered? Where did these guys go to school? I’m sure lots of people have been called much worse, myself included. You can interpret ‘monkey’ as a racist slur, but you might also affectionately call your kids the same thing, no malice intended. Perhaps these guys should add insults like ‘dirty rotter’ and ‘filthy scallywag’ to their repertoire. If you want to insult someone, have the decency to come up with something at least a little offensive. The current exchange sounds a bit like dialogue from an Enid Blyton story.