Batsmen, judges, public burnings

The Jamaican cricketer Chris Gayle has been much in the news after failing conspicuously in his efforts to chat up a winsome TV presenter, an offence that drew a fine of $10,000 and saw suggestions from administrators and pundits that he be banned from the sport for good. During a Radio National discussion of the incident a female sports reporter very nearly dissolved in tears at the sexist injustice of it all. The Fairfax columnist Malcolm Knox, who once informed English readers that “racism in Australia is insidious, unadmitted”, was so disturbed by the news of a black man asking a white woman to join him for a drink that, in a peculiar demonstration of his earlier point, he penned an entire column in the argot of what he imagines to be Rastaman patois. That Gayle is not a Rastafarian seems not have bothered Knox in the least. The batsman is, after all, a Jamaican and very much on the dusky side, so any broad-brush stereotype will do. One hopes Knox did not don blackface and suck on a big spliff in order to get himself into character. Then again, one cannot be entirely sure.

Cricket buffs less prone to pulpiteering and fulmination, no doubt many Quadrant Online readers amongst them, are apt to be more nuanced in regretting Gayle’s interest in maidens and the smooth coarseness of his overture. Standards have certainly slipped! While the great Keith Miller was no less keen on the intimacies of female companionship, never once did he present an amorous proposition via an interviewer’s microphone. If you haven’t noticed, the Age of the Gentleman is quite clearly done and gone.

Gone, too, at least in the eyes of some, might be faith in our courts and justice system — this speculation prompted by the remarkable good fortune of a nasty piece of work, a certain Yavaz Kilic, whose burgeoning career in criminality culminated early last year in a 14-year sentence for accosting his former girlfriend, dousing her with petrol and setting the unfortunate women ablaze. She recovered, more or less, and so, thanks to a ruling last week by Victoria’s Supreme Court, has her attacker, whose appeal against his sentence succeeded in seeing it reduced by roughly one third.

According to Justices Robert Redlich and Simon Whelan, the sentencing judge fell prey to emotion and imposed too stiff a sentence.

Ah, emotion! It’s a funny old thing. For days now we’ve been treated to rants and sermons about a humble cricketer’s lack of couth, including the charge that Gayle’s gaffe somehow encourages domestic violence. What chance, do you reckon, that those same arbiters of “appropriate” behaviour will now switch their scolding tongues to lashing senior members of the bench?

No need to answer that, as they will not have the time: a fresh target has made himself the latest object of politically correct ire. While the appalling Kilic celebrates his reduced sentence, Channel 10’s Hamish McLachlan is in trouble for giving weather girl Monika Radulovic an unsolicited hug. At least he did not set her on fire.

Who amongst the conspicuous righteous can be bothered getting upset about judges, the law, vile criminals’ lucky breaks and the protection of public safety when there are important figures — sportsmen, TV talking heads and cheek-pecking ministers for pointless portfolios — to criticise and abuse?

Those who might have difficulty grasping that punishment’s extent for setting a woman on fire is moderated in part by the extent of her injuries can absorb the logic of Justices Redlich and Whelan via the link below. It makes fascinating reading, not least the weight given to evidence by the culprit’s kin that, all things considered, her injuries could have been worse.

— roger franklin

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