The Indian cricket team these days seems to provide as much melodramatic entertainment as the film and television industry in the country, sometimes you suspect what you’re witnessing is a collaborative effort. The BCCI orchestrates the production, players play their roles on the field and off it (or on the field and on the sets), the media looks after the post-production work and promotion. And everyone including a certain disgruntled Mumbaikar in Karachi makes money. And the spectators, I mean the audiences? The collaborators know quite well what they want. Masala. And as Golandaaz points out, that’s exactly what they got in the Sydney test too :

This was a Test that will be long remembered for its cricket as well as the masala surrounding it. If one can point out Symonds defiant knock in the first innings, then you also had the bunny business between Harbhajan and Ponting. If you can think of Laxman’s majestic century, then surely the umpiring decisions cannot be easily forgotten and if you thought Sachin, Hussey and Hayden delivered master class performances, the whole racism row between India and Australia was equally class less.

Like in Golandaaz’s post, the ‘whole racism row’ gets little mention in Srikanth Mangalam’s post (on the same test) too:

I have lost all respect for the Australian team and the australian media (including Channel nine) for their sissy like behavior, and any trust of the ICC and its people, and am finding it difficult to view this series in any objective manner possible.

And Sagar Satapathy is as angry and outraged as Srikanth:

If we believe the media reports and insider sources besides the logical facts, India may abandon the Australian tour. The Indian team management, BCCI, media and more importantly, millions of cricket fans across the globe are outraged over the way they were treated by the Australians, umpires and match referee.

And the media too seems very outraged, and again not over the ‘whole racism issue’. Star News played over and over again the scenes depicting the 11 or 13 mistakes that Bucknor and Benson, the umpires, are supposed to have made, accompanied by a censorious, disembodied voice calling Bucknor ’shikhandi’ and Benson ’shakuni mama’ and so on. The English language channels also offered tirades, in English. The outrage was wholly over how India lost a match- was nothing else lost?

Why doesn’t the ‘whole racism issue’ bother many outraged Indians? Well, prejudice seems to have become so commonplace an ingredient in the masala, one of 22 or 28 or 36 different varieties of spices that are thrown into this or that curry or biryani or whatever, that’s dished out to us that we’ve stopped noticing it. Unless its picked out of the mixture, like the offending line in the Aaja Nachle song, and thrust in our faces. Or like Andrew Symonds’ indignation. That’s the simplest explanation. And also the most nauseating.