Life wasn't meant to be fair - Bruce Francis
By Dean Tuckwell
Bruce Francis was a hard hitting opening batsman who played for Australia against the Rest of the World & England in the 1970s. He loves the game and has had a fascinating & varied cricket journey, playing & working in England & South Africa as well as managing Tony Greig’s business affairs, advising Kerry Packer on WSC & organising the rebel tours of South Africa in the 1980's. He is an interesting bloke to chat to (or more accurately listen to!) and we were speaking this morning about the Sydney Test and in particular the DRS. Never short of an opinion “Mule" sent me the following article that he wrote some years ago and I share it with his permission.
Life was never meant to be fair. If it were, Shane Warne and the other pampered princesses’ whinging about umpiring were paid by the number of extra viewers they brought to the coverage, they would receive the same hourly rate as those working in nursing homes.
The following was written a number of years ago. Some of it is outdated, but the message is the same. Save your whinging for the important things in life.
It's time the cricket world - the players, the media and the supporters - got over itself. The world is not coming to an end just because the umpire made a mistake with Michael Hussey's caught behind decision in the First Test against India in Melbourne. We have all been victims of bad luck or bad decisions in cricket, in other sports, and indeed, in life.
Some bad decisions stopped careers in their embryo stages and others ended careers prematurely. On the other-hand, one bad decision in 1946 extended Don Bradman's career and gave us the 1948 Invincibles. Heck, our footy teams have even lost grand-finals and we lost a World Cup soccer match to Italy because of bad decisions, but we all got on with life.
Channel Nine didn't split the atom when it developed technology to prove umpires made mistakes. We all knew umpires did. It may give its viewers more to whinge about at the pub when it exposes umpires' mistakes but it doesn't mean that the whingers and Channel Nine should determine how cricket should be played, particularly when few of the other countries can afford Channel Nine's inexact toys.
In the good old days cricket distinguished itself from all other sports by the preparedness of the players and supporters to accept the umpires' decisions. As Sydney Cricket Ground Trust Chairman Rodney Cavalier said "Cricket is fantasy. It is the intersection of Heaven and Earth, it cannot ever be the slave of certainty. The essence of cricket is honour and accepting the umpire's decision."
Even Colonel Saito in Bridge on the River Kwai knew how special cricket was in the old days. Alec Guinness complains about Japanese barbarism to the Commander of the POW camp and cites the Geneva Convention Colonel Saito: "Do not speak to me of rules. This is war! This is not a game of cricket."
How ironic is it that America, the home of technology, still doesn't use technology in baseball and still doesn't allow disgusting advertising on its uniforms or on the field. As my mate Andrew Leeming once related about the best story he heard about umpiring came from baseball: 1st Umpire "I call them as I see them" 2nd Umpire "I call them as they are" 3rd Umpire "They ain't anything until I call them." So true!
Even in the most important game in the land, the functioning of our democracy, we don't give a rat's about the umpires' decisions. Amazingly, we let the favoured team (the government) pick its own umpire (the speaker). And if he (Harry Jenkins) can't guarantee a win, you bench him, and give a bloke from the other team (Peter Slipper) with an axe to grind, a go.
I'm over the moon that our cricketers are now the highest paid team sportsmen in the country. But just because they now earn upwards of $2million a year; fly at the pointy end of the plane; behave on the field in a manner which would earn them a smack in the mouth in a pub; are treated like Koalas (protected species) by officials; and have nannies to look after their kids while their wives socialise at the cricket, it doesn't mean life has to be perfect or fair, all the time.
For those who aren't convinced life is not always fair, they should talk to the golfers who hit off in the afternoon in teeming rain and in a howling wind in the British Open, while those who hit off in the morning played in benign conditions.
Perhaps closer to home, in a more important game called Life, they should have a chat to hundreds of thousands of carers who work 24/7 on subsistence wages with no superannuation; or have a quiet discussion with our soldiers in Afghanistan who are forced to use sub-par equipment; or have a chat to the parents who can't afford proper treatment or equipment for their disabled children and can't afford to belong to a medical fund, while multi-millionaires get free hospital treatment and subsidised medical benefits, and professional couples get large subsidies for their children to attend pre-school.
Maybe they should also talk to some of Her Majesty's guests who are in Long Bay for possessing stolen goods to see if it's fair, while at the same time, former Prime Minister, Mr Fraser, Julian Burnside QC, and the media want to give Julian Assange a 'Knighthood' for allegedly doing the same thing.
In Colonial days, when we westerners thought we knew what was best for the world, our Asian neighbours eventually took exception to being told what to do. It is ironic that now that India is propping up world cricket, it is still being chastised by our people and media, who still think they know what is fair and right with umpiring decisions, despite the fact there are still major flaws in the Decision Review System.
Regards
Bruce Francis