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Boos, jeers, racist taunts, and insults are the most despicable traits of spectators at sporting events. Yet, universally they remain as prevalent as cheers and bonhomie.
A charitable excuse would be that it expresses the passions stirred up by rivalries, or might be triggered by unsporting behaviour and reprehensible conduct in the arenas.
Photo: Randy Brooks/ CPL T20 via Getty Images
When Kieron Pollard was interviewed right after TKR’s victory in the CPL final in Guyana, he felt compelled to trash the crowd’s hostility towards him primarily.
While Pollard has done his share of riling up spectators in his career, this obviously stung him. It took away something substantial from the elation he should rightfully have been enjoying.
Pollard was named Player of the Tournament and, right through it, he demonstrated his class and his commitment to excellence. He has been a striding figure for West Indies cricket for 18 years, and a global star in the white-ball formats.
He invoked his years of service to the West Indian community, to the game he so obviously loves, and expressed his sorrow at the way players are treated. Who is to say when next we will have a chance to witness his magnificence?
Pollard, 38, was adjudged the player of the tournament.
(via TKR.)
Why the crowd responded so viciously to him is part of the general disrespect with which we treat our cricketers.
Behaviour at the various stadia is just the physical manifestation of conduct that is increasingly rabid and vulgar. I am talking about the shocking levels of nastiness that spew out from social media platforms.
Does anyone think of the impact of their callous comments on the players?
At the beginning of that final match, Ian Bishop felt he had to tell people to keep their rude remarks off his social media feeds.
The comments I have seen are crude, crass, racist, and quite frankly, exhibit a level of stupidity that probably qualifies the posters to run for the US presidency.
It doesn’t seem to matter what the subject is—the derelict minds take off on their own trajectories. In no time, exchanges become personal, people resorting to obscenities and descriptions of private parts. What fuels this venom?
Last week I wrote about the joys of the CPL, and how many expressions of Caribbean unity it highlighted. The grimy underbelly that co-exists is not, to my mind, created by the CPL.
The tournament has simply provided a platform for something that already exists.
In my own naïve and optimistic way, I saw the now-boring banter about chicken curry and curry chicken as something of an inside family joke.
I’d even thought about writing that even if in T&T the term is curry chicken, when I am labelling my little food containers for freezer storage, I write either curried chicken or chicken curry. The editor and writer in me makes it an instinctive action.
I still think it is a harmless rivalry that has nothing to do with the tastiness of the dishes produced from any locale.
And I was charmed by the effervescence of Guyanese spectators at matches around the region; how they good-naturedly declared themselves to be representing various teams on account of where they live, who is their partner, and so on—the little factors that have made us feel like Caribbean people, regardless of where we live.
Photo: Ashley Allen – CPL T20/CPL T20 via Getty Images.
Trinis were no less visible, no less vocal, and often repeated those sentiments. Many spoke about celebrating the unity they felt within the parameters of CPL. The doors of the diaspora opened up and released a joyful brigade happy to partake of that sense of belonging to something homely.
I have heard people say there is an extra rivalry between T&T and Guyana. They refer to the oil boom days that so slicked up the place that Trinis became pompous and cocky, and were especially cruel to the Guyanese in our midst who were facing hard times.
Circumstances have changed extraordinarily now that Guyana is experiencing its own oil wealth. Who’s to say that the past has not left a bitter platform for current relations? I suspect there is more of this than anything else in the animosity.
Lara, a world record holder, declared Chanderpaul his favourite batting partner.
Lara is from Trinidad and Tobago and Chanderpaul is Guyanese.
But notwithstanding the real or imagined slights that form the basis for dislike and distrust, there is something absolutely appalling about the level at which the so-called discourse is conducted.
It reveals something alarming about the culture that social media has either facilitated or spawned, or both. There is a deep level of functional illiteracy—people do not seem to be able to understand what they read. And they cannot spell, and I do not remark on this because it is part of my profession. It is quite depressing to see how prevalent it is.
Apart from this, there is much evidence that the people who are eager to spread their gospels on social media platforms operate without the capacity to process information, to think, to reason.
Is this something that is confined to the kind of mentality that lives to vent online? Is it a general indictment on the educational systems? Is it that people who are more inclined to thoughtful behaviour do not gallop into cyberspace?
What accounts for this obvious cauldron of misery that seeks comfort by lashing out indiscriminately on these platforms of anonymity?
They are perplexing and distressing questions that speak to more than booing from the stands and online stabbings. It might not be regional, but it is a cause for shame.
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Vaneisa Baksh is a columnist with the Trinidad Express, an editor and a cricket historian. She is the author of a biography of Sir Frank Worrell.
While I enjoyed reading the post I don’t think that the booing was adequately addressed. I visited stadiums across Trinidad for CPL games in the past and can’t recall Trinidadian booing any other team or player. In my opinion it’s disrespectful to the players and by extension the game. Regardless of how passionate about your team you are it’s not required or necessary.
Trolling on social media is also very poor and I agree with the statement that most of the person who troll are uneducated and can’t spell. I am a TKR fan but openly support all of the young players from the different teams to do well whether they are playing for or against TKR. Processing information is very challenging for many.
In closing the author should directly address booing and say where the possible source of it is because they booed Pollard in Barbados when he left the team and returned to play for TKR. So if there’s animosity between Guyana and Trinidad over wealth and oil etc. what’s the problem between Barbados and Trinidad. Just saying.