They say, what goes around comes around. And having dished out racial taunts and abuses for years and years on opposition teams, Australia is indeed getting a taste of their own medicine. First time ever, an Australian player has complained to the game’s governing body that he was racially abused by an Indian player. The Aussie involved in the spat was Andrew Symonds while Harbhajan Singh is the alleged offender. While maintaining that sport has no place for racism, we are excited to see Australia getting back what it dished out for others for years and years. Racism in cricket is a monster created by the Australians and only when one of its own players is subjected to racial taunts, the Australians feel the gravity of it.

Any Sri Lankan who was old enough to watch and read the happenings during Sri Lanka’s tour of Australia in 1995-1996 would tell you that the Aussies cheated the Sri Lankans and racially vilified the opposition players on a number of occasions. The old wounds are still fresh and a die hard supporter of Sri Lanka Asoka Atapattu, who now resides in Wellington, New Zealand summed up it all very nicely. "Australia has produced a number of quality cricketers and I used to be an Aussie admirer, but after what they did to us in 1995, I want even Bangladesh to beat them," he said recently in one of our many cricket chats.

Atapattu is not alone on this count as most Sri Lankans want the worst for the Australians and that’s why that famous Bangladesh win against them in England in the Nat West Series in 2005 was celebrated here as if Sri Lanka had beaten Australia in a big final.

In that 1995-96, tour we could see and hear many on and off the field incidents. On one occasion, Sri Lanka’s cricket captain was pushed by Australian fast bowler Craig McDermott and as Roshan Mahanama states in his autobiography ‘Retired Hurt’ another fast bowler, Glenn McGrath, racially abused an opening batsman after he had carted the Aussie attack all around the park. As we have repeatedly said in these columns, the Match Referees had turned a blind eye whenever the Australians have been the culprits. Although the role of Match Referee wasn’t something that was prominent when those two incidents happened, it certainly was when Darren Lehman abused the Sri Lankans right next to their dressing room in 2003 by saying ‘black c----‘.

Despite an official complaint by coach Dav Whatmore, Match Referee Clive Lloyd let the player off the hook. But the ICC acted swiftly and penalized the player by suspending him for five ODIs.

Now, here’s a pertinent issue. ICC Match Referee Lloyd fails to punish an Australian even after he’s been presented with evidence and another Match Referee, this time Mike Procter, calls for a hearing without any evidence at all. The umpires say they didnsee or hear Harbhajan saying anything and all channel Nine television cameras aren’t able to provide any video evidence. Sunil Gavasker, now a respected cricket commentator, very pertinently pointed out the other day that match officials treat the Australians different from players from other countries and this is further proof for that.

Over the years, the Australian administrators have taken no steps at all to disciplinise their players, who have been practising the grand trade of racial abuses, which was very much a part of their mental disintegration stratergy.

We are reminded of the spat between Glen McGrath and Ramnaresh Sarwan during the 2002-03 Test series in the Caribbean where questions of racisim was raised, but neither the Match Referee nor the Australian officials took steps to put an end to it. And, what about the boorish Australian supporters.

The Sri Lankans players, particularly Muttiah Muralitharan, has been victimized by Australian crowds with racial taunts and so have been the coloured or black South African players. Did Cricket Australia do anything noteworthy to punish the offenders? For this summer when Sri Lanka toured Australia for the two-Test series, they introduced a new anti racism code applicable to all spectators and if found guilty a spectator could have been ejected from the ground and could even receive a life ban. This new code in fact came into effect after Symonds himself was subjected to several racial taunts during Australia’s tour of India last year.

Not only in cricket, historically Australia has looked down upon everything that was non white. Haven’t we heard of their cruelty towards the Aborigines. The indigenous Australians at present are restricted to the northern part of that country while those incorrigible offenders from England are enjoying the luxuries, the more prosperous places of that vast country has to offer. The whites also wiped out the Aborigines from Tasmania and we have heard stories where the whites went to the extent of killing every Aborigine child.

Australia has to start the reconciliation at its own quarters. They need to tell their players that racism has zero tolerance and that Cricket Australia is indeed worried about its fast eroding reputation. They need to come down from its axiom ‘win at any cost’ and work towards winning the hearts of the people.

Some say this Australian team is the best to have played the game, better than Bradman’s 1948 Invincibles and better than Clive Lloyd’s teams of the 1980s. Well, may be, they are also worst sportsmen to have played the game. Sportsmanship is a word that’s alien to the Australian teams and while everything looks fine with them when they win, when things don’t go their way, you see the true colour of the Australians.