Moeen Ali reveals about facing racial abuse by Australian players in 2015 Ashes Down Under
Moeen Ali has stated that he hasn’t disliked any team other than Australia and revealed of facing racial taunt from an unnamed member of their 2015 Ashes team. He has added that he faced the same in Australia as well, and though he gave them benefit of doubt sometimes, it had gone worse day by day.
Racial abuse in cricket hasn't been a new thing in cricket with the Harbhajan Singh-Andrew Symonds saga taking it to a whole new level in 2007. While Imran Tahir had to suffer the same fate in England once, most of the Pakistani players of the yesteryear had to tolerate a lot of racial abuse. And now, Moeen Ali is the latest one to have come out in public about the existence of racism in the game and he was abused during the first Ashes Test at Cardiff in 2015 after scoring 77 runs in the first innings and before taking five wickets in a 169-run England victory.
"It was a great first Ashes Test in terms of my personal performance. However, there was one incident which had distracted me. An Australian player had turned to me on the field and said, 'Take that, Osama.' I could not believe what I had heard. I remember going really red. I have never been so angry on a cricket field," Moeen writes in the book, which was revealed by The Times.
"I told a couple of the guys what the player had said to me and I think Trevor Bayliss [the England coach] must have raised it with Darren Lehmann, the Australians' coach. Lehmann asked the player, 'Did you call Moeen Osama?' He denied it, saying, 'No, I said, 'Take that, you part-timer.'' I must say I was amused when I heard that, obviously I had to take the player's word for it, though for the rest of the match I was angry."
Moeen was born in Birmingham to a Pakistani father and an English mother and grew up playing for Worcestershire. While his religious beliefs have been stronger and have often been lauded, Moeen stood for standing by his belief while letting others do their own ritual. But that hardly helped some regressive people to come hard on him and one person in Australia even asked him when his kebab shop was opening.
"Guys were sticking their fingers up at me. I expected Australia to be quite rough, but not as bad as this. I hadn't heard such comments for a long time. I got some of this abuse even in the practice games."
"Everyone you speak to . . . they are the only team I've played against my whole life that I've actually disliked," Moeen told Mike Atherton. "Not because it's Australia and they are the old enemy but because of the way they carry on and disrespect of people and players."
"The first game I played against them, in Sydney just before the 2015 World Cup, they were not just going hard at you, they were almost abusing you. That was the first time it hit me. I gave them the benefit of the doubt but the more I played against them they were just as bad, the Ashes here [in 2015] they were worse actually. Not intimidating, just rude. Individually they are fine and the Aussies we've had at Worcester have been fantastic, lovely guys."
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