Friday, 19 January 2007

Ian Chappell, moral champion

Ian Chappell has always been one of the better Australian cricket commentators. The only thing about him that ever annoys me is his holier-than-thou attitude when it comes to onfield behaviour. This isn't because I disagree with him, it is just that it seems so hypocritical coming from the captain of a team dubbed "The Ugly Australians" for their histrionics, bad behaviour and sledging.

But it seems that Ian Chappell has not just become a paragon of onfield virtue. The following comes from an article written by well-known leftie John Pilger:

During the recent Ashes series, Ian Chappell, one of Australia's most admired cricket captains, walked out of the commentary box when [Australian PM John] Howard walked in. After seeing for himself conditions in a refugee prison, Chappell said: "These are human beings and you can't just treat them like that ... in cricketing parlance it was like cheating. They were being cheated out of a fair go."

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Chappell said that on Australian Story in 2003 after the Tampa scam when he started working for refugee rights.

He doesn't like Howard's "values" and he did walk out but he said this years ago.

brett_mcs said...

The "refugees" can walk out too, whenever they want, and toodle off back to where they came from. Would-be queue jumpers is a more accurate description.

And of course we know that Brother Greg is a conservative party politician in Queensland!

Ben said...

I hate queue jumpers! Especially at the movies. What if I miss out on a ticket because someone jumped the queue? Queue jumpers deserve all they get.

Anonymous said...

Good on Chapelli! Unlike the pig-ignorant brettmcs and ben, Chapelli went to the camps and saw how the PEOPLE there were treated. Question: Are the kids queue jumpers too?