Pakistan fans burn with shame

Pakistan fans burn cricket effigies after humiliating loss to Australia at Perth's WACA on Friday. Photo: AFP

Pakistan's humbling one-day defeat in Perth on Friday night seems to have been the last straw for the fans back home, who took to the streets in their hundreds to burn bats, stumps and an effigy of PCB Chairman Ijaz Butt in protest.

Mohammad Yousuf's team play their last game of a disastrous tour at the WACA Ground today, trailing the series 4-0 and facing the prospect of a one-day whitewash to follow the 3-0 defeat in the Test series.

After witnessing the 135-run massacre in WA, furious fans and around 250 young cricketers from various academies in Karachi chanted slogans against the team and the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) during the hour-long protest under the banner of the “Save Pakistan cricket campaign.”

The protesters chanted "Go, Butt, Go!", "President Zardari, save Pakistan cricket", and "Goodbye Pakistan cricket" as they burnt dozens of cricket bats, stumps and an effigy of PCB chairman Ijaz Butt.

Amir Akram, chairman of the recently-formed campaign, said President Asif Ali Zardari must remove Butt, blaming him for destroying the game.

"Cricket is our love and the recent defeats have disheartened millions of fans across the country, so we demand President Asif Zardari to remove Butt, who is too old to run the board," Akram said of the 71-year-old PCB chairman.

Zardari is the patron of the PCB and appointed Butt in October 2008.

Butt has also come under pressure from the National Assembly’s standing committee on sports, which has been demanding his removal since last year.

WA today

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Indian media goes quiet on the murder of Ranjodh Singh

For the simple reason that this terrible crime cannot be shoehorned into a simplistic narrative of Anglo-racism against people from India.

Police are fairly sure that when Singh was set on fire by three people of Indian origin, he was still alive.

Three Indian nationals faced court yesterday charged over Singh's murder after police arrested the third suspect, a 25-year-old man, in Wagga Wagga.

Gurpreet Singh, 23, and his wife, Harpreet Kaur Bullar, 20, faced Sutherland Local Court, and Harpreet Singh appeared in Wagga Wagga Local Court. Neither Gurpreet Singh nor Ms Bullar applied for bail. They were arrested by NSW homicide squad detectives on Thursday.

The killing has drawn little attention in India.

I don't think this means that there hasn't been a problem faced by Indian students in Australia. Especially now that the Victoria Police has admitted that it felt there was a problem as far back as two years ago.

But the hysterical treatment of the issue by the less reputable sections of the Indian media has not helped.

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If Eddie McGuire says so, it must be so eh?

Though, if Eddie McGuire is a proponent of the idea that Australians are unusually racist, what could be wrong with the idea? Interesting that both of the examples he gives involve a white guy getting bashed up by...well read on. And yet the entire narrative of these and other recent assaults and murders has been cast as a simplistic "evil white Australians doing beastly things to oppressed but saintly non-Anglos" morality play by those keen to prove their own moral superiority over ordinary people. Interesting though that one of the people charged with the bashing of Indian student Sourabh Sharma is himself of Indian descent. But, as a member of a minority that has had its own share of trouble from parts of the wider society myself, I still reckon Australian society is overwhelmingly characterised by its openness and tolerance. I live in an area with high numbers of recently arrived and still establishing immigrants, especially from the Middle East and Africa. Arab and African Muslim women veiled in half a dozen different ways rub shoulders with Christians from the Sudan. There's an African church that meets every Sunday in the community centre, and I heard the choir practising outside one morning. Singing in English, but with that unmistakable African sound. And what a wonderful sound it was too. The men's hairdressing shop was bought by some Iraqi Shi'ites several years ago and they have turned it into a thriving business. Everybody, including Africans and Anglos, goes there. It's not perfect where I live. What or where is? But most people seem to get along quite nicely and I think that is what is normal in this country, despite what those who make a living from trying to sell fear, (at either end of the spectrum), say.

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