Slow Love™
International Captain
Yeah, I was thinking about this last night. The way that teams are formulated obviously encourages us to praise and criticise, support or oppose players on national lines. In fact, although hilarious in some respects, the ICC's (or was it Cricket Australia, I forgot) decision to release a list of national epithets that were deemed appropriate to vilify your opponent on the basis of the country they came from made this quite clear. In some ways it makes sense, and I think most of us can tell the difference between what's OK and what isn't considered OK (and this will be shaped by politics and the times), but on the other hand, some national identities (or even just cultural ones) seem to dovetail with racial identities. Worse still, to the ignorant or the bigoted, important distinctions tend not to apply (so you get Pakistanis derided as Indians, or Japanese referred to as Chinks, etc, etc, etc).
But ultimately, because we encourage such an adversarial relationship between the nations both on the field and as spectators, we ought to be careful about how we perceive comments directed at country of origin or nationality (which is why I'm cautious about the labelling of Gibbs' remarks ("for the record"). Generally, obviously context has to be the guide. I do think that players should be careful not to make generalised remarks about people based on color of skin, nationality, etc, but nobody could say that our approach to this isn't confusing at times.
, and neither played enough tests.
) is considered in the UK. It's on a par with the N-word. It's undoubtedly a racial slur &, as Broad is a Pom after all, my guess is that he would've thrown the book at Gibbs. Rightly so, IMHO, using it is prima facie evidence of racist intent on Gibbs's part. "Pakistani" isn't.