Peter Roebuck: 2 years gone: A Final Letter

Dear Peter, 

It is 2 years now and I still miss your voice. I click on the sports section in the smh and there’s still a part of me that expects to see your lively pieces. It took me a year to listen to my favourite broadcast of cricket on the ABC because I knew that I wouldn’t be hearing from you. As a writer, you were supreme in the field of cricket journalism. Your opinions were certainly open to question from time to time, but the way you wrote them was everything a reader could hope for.  

I loved that you were a literate cricket writer. I loved that you had so obviously studied history, I loved that you were an erudite man. Here was an intellectual who loved cricket, my uncle was the intellectual in our family, but he always scorned me for being so enamoured of sport. You were my bulwark against the idea that I was wasting my talents by following games like cricket.

Your comments and your articles helped me realise that cricket was a part of the world, and a part of the history of the modern world, and that the game reflected them both very well. One can study cricket and see many of the great themes of modern British, Commonwealth and Australian history writ large through it. May I take a moment to recommend Ramachandra Guha’s superb A Corner of a Foreign Field for any who doubt just how thoroughly cricket is entwined with history?

I admired your passion for the difficulties playing cricket at a high level presented for ordinary people in the West Indies and in Zimbabwe. You placed cricket in the world, rather than trying to separate the two.

After a day’s play, I would stay awake until the clock ticked over midnight, so I could log on to the smh.com.au and read your latest account of the great deeds and world changing events that had occurred the previous day between 11 and 6. For they were great deeds, there was always a feeling in your articles that the events of the previous day had mattered, they were a chapter in a much larger, more important story than just the runs that were scored or the wickets that were taken. Sometimes I felt that desire to fit those events into an expansive narrative caused you to get some additional exercise in jumping to conclusions, but that was all part of the fun. 

My biggest criticism of you was for your article demanding Ricky Ponting be sacked, which I felt was a huge overreaction as I detailed here. But it certainly demonstrated your influence as *everyone* picked up on that story. I think you realised it was an overreaction later on, as I don’t recall you ever being especially critical of Ponting subsequently. You were saying nice things about his batting after it had become clear to my Ponting biased eyes that the great man was past it!!

 

But, there was another side to you besides the great writer. The fact that you had gotten in trouble for caning an adult student of yours was well known and created quite a controversy. At the time I was terribly worried that the smh and ABC would distance themselves from the scandal in the most straightforward manner, by giving you a termination notice. It was, I felt at the time, a reflection upon the good sense of both organisations that you were encouraged to carry on. And years passed, and I continued to enjoy your writing, and the question that story raised, of had it happened again, wasn’t one that I paid much attention to.

However, ignoring something doesn't always mean it will go away, as soon as I heard of your suicide I suspected something similar was afoot, as did many others, Adam Shand later produced a detailed, thoughtful, balanced profile that made it very clear that the term predator was not an unreasonable label to apply to you without forgetting that you were human and the evil co-insists with the good.

Thank you,  Peter,  for the writings and commentary that I so loved. I'm sorry you didn't feel more comfortable with yourself as you may have been able to find what you needed from people who were genuinely able to give consent. Adults they may have been, but their poverty left them with little choice but to do what you wished, irrespective of whether they personally wished to engage in such activities. I hope that they find peace as they go forward in their lives and that when people remember you, that they speak of you as you were, not as you wished to be. 

Lindsay Went

An open response to Peter Roebuck

I'm still looking for evidence and reasons as to why Ricky Ponting should be sacked as Australian captain. Nothing he has done is exceptional for an Australian captain, or indeed a captain of any other country. The first article was long on rhetoric and short on logic. The follow-up basically admitted that the first was written to stir things up and get attention. In that, it was successful. In providing logical reasons for the demand in the first, it was a failure.

Australia has sacked one captain in the last 80 odd years and that was for overly defensive captaincy over a long period. Consequently, sacking of Australian captains is a responsibility that is taken pretty seriously, with the reluctance to do so prolonging the careers of Steve Waugh and Mark Taylor when strong cases were available for dismissing both of them.

Over zealous appealing, celebrating and unnecessary sledging have been characteristics of the modern game and are shared by all teams and most captains. Demanding decisions and pressurising umpires is a trait most players are pretty good at. Anil Kumble has been a master of it.

Indian players indulged in sledging during the test, they participated enthusiastically in appeals deliberately designed to deceive the umpire and convince him to give players out. While they didn't participate in over the top celebrations, they compensated for that burst of good taste by deliberately wasting time after both dismissals in what turned out to be the final over of the game. Sending a man out with incorrect gloves was a particularly shrewd although thoroughly unsportsmanlike tactic that may well have saved the game by preventing an additional over being bowled. For a man who was allegedly intent upon pressuring umpires, Ponting's refusal to appeal for Sharma's dismissal due to the amount of time it took him to get out there is striking.


Anil Kumble certainly saw no problem with this behaviour as he indicated that his team was the team playing the match in the spirit of the game. The Indian captain was very happy to imply that the loss was solely the responsibility of the umpires. He did not devote a word to all the runs the Australians gained through their superior ground fielding and running between wickets in comparison with the consistently lacklustre performance of the Indians in these areas. There can be no doubt that if India were even vaguely competitive in these areas, the Australians would not have had the time to bowl them out.

As there were no corresponding claims from you that Kumble should join Ponting in cricketing exile, I infer that you are satisfied that he and his team were meeting the required standard for cricketing behaviour. It would appear that demands for cricketing morality and leadership start and end with Ricky Ponting.

This is the same captain whom you saluted for sporting behaviour in 2005. (1.) You have also saluted his general captaincy in 2006 after the Ashes victory and on many other occasions.

What is the leadership required of an Australian cricket captain? Please define it and explain how other countries are meeting that standard and how recent Australian captains have met it and where Ponting has not met it ? If only Australian captains should meet this standard, could you please explain why captains of other cricketing nations are not required to meet it?

Was this really the ugliest Australian effort of the last 20 years? Glenn McGrath's efforts against the West Indies in 2003 comes to mind.

Harbhajan Singh started the altercation, and then responded inappropriately to the inevitable responses and said something he should not have, that had been clearly explained to him would cause problems. What would your article have said had it been an Australian who had produced an unacceptable comment after being privately warned by the Indian players about it? It may be that Symonds did not want Ponting to wash it under the carpet, which would have been the easier option.

I saw plenty of sympathy for Harbhajan Singh from you, despite him being a very experienced cricketer with a long history of sledging. Hunted from the game? If his suspension holds up, he'll be back. If someone's being hunted from the game, it's Brad Hogg, who was put up on a charge in a cynical tit for tat exercise which has seen not a comment from you in sympathy for the man or in disgust at the callous tactic. A suspension along Harbhajan's lines could well endanger Hogg's future as his position in the team is precarious. I believe he has a family too.

With regards to Simon Katich being captain, your Australian citizenship clearly has not overridden your English cricket heart. Only an Englishman would suggest making someone captain who can't even make the team. There is no place in Australian cricket for a captain who isn't worth his place in the side. The captain who resigned was heavily influenced in doing so by his complete inability to score runs, Katich would likely find himself in the same spot. As for one day cricket, even if he scored runs, his strike rate simply does not justify a position.

I wasn't impressed with Ponting's lack of awareness re India's feelings myself or his general behaviour during the Sydney Test, but it's a huge step from that to sacking him. I am a strong supporter of the Australian policy to only sack captains when there is no other alternative. I certainly don't sack them for conduct well within the bounds of accepted behaviour in the modern cricket game. Whether the behaviour should be accepted is another issue altogether, one that should be being debated with the sort of passion you displayed in venting over Ponting. Nevertheless, sacking someone for behaving in the same manner as his peers is unjustifiable. We'd have to retrospectively sack every Australian captain for the last 30 years and most of our opposing captains as well.

Most of this mess is a reflection of the hypocrisy in modern cricket etiquette. It's normal to cheat when you're batting or appealing, but it's an insult to your opponents when you're catching. It's part of the game to be rude and intimidate your opponents in most conceivable ways as long as you don't say certain unacceptable comments. While cricket has that half hearted and illogical moral code built in, it's going to continue to have blow ups about player behaviour. I have zero respect for this code of etiquette and think it's appalling. However, seeing that it's accepted by the game in general, I cannot support dismissing a captain for following it.

An aside to finish. One of your concerns about Ponting was his pressuring of umpires, something you see every time the ball hits the pad anywhere near in line. Why are appeals necessary? It may be a historical part of the game but there's no reason for them. If the umpire puts up his finger, you're out. Appealing influences umpires. Ban it. It'll make the game more boring, but it'll make umpire's decisions more reflective of what they are seeing, not what the players are seeing or claiming to see. Other sports with waiting time don't have appeals before a decision, it's obvious when a decision needs to be made and they just look at the umpire and await it.