A lot of people think the punishment given to Gibbs is too strong (which he has appealed against incidentally). A case can very well be made that a two match ban may or may not be very harsh but from where I sit, an international cricketer should be sensible enough to know what he says and if he says some thing which can have an implication of having a racial under current, it is needed that there is some strong punishment meted out.

Racism, even the hint of it, has to be kicked out of sport and I would have been unhappy with any thing less than a 1 match ban. That it was a two match ban and it has been brought into spotlight means that cricketers will think twice before bringing racism into sport. I mentioned regarding India in my earlier post and far too often they have not made big deals and I am glad Pakistan has here and all the more, action has been taken.

If the offense was not racism, there could be reason for it to be analysed seeing intent. Dean Jones got a tough punishment it may seem but racism is a grave and so the action was needed there as well. Just because Jones was stupid did not mean he didn’t deserve to lose his job or Gibbs didn’t deserve to get a severe punishment.

I can see why some people might feel the punishment is too harsh given he might not have intended to say such a thing or didn’t intend to say such a thing in the context it was taken. However, the implications, as it is with most racial slurs, cannot be ignored and so I am happy with the two match ban.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 16th, 2007 at 9:58 pm and is filed under Cricket. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.