Before leaving England, opener Ben Duckett seemed to have resigned to the dispiriting eventuality that awaited him in Australia. The 5’7” batsman knew the Aussies, over the five Ashes Tests, would sledge him about his short stature.
This wasn’t new but was too hurtful to get used to. It had happened to Duckett on school playgrounds, on the county circuit, and even when he played home games for England. Now, in the heat of the Ashes, he feared lines would be crossed and his patience might snap.
“I know what they are going to call me. I’ve had it my whole life. I only have to stand by the Western Terrace [at Headingley] and the English fans are at me for being small. You’ve just got to deal with it, try and laugh, maybe go back at them. We’ll see how that goes — probably not well. I’ve always had a lot of chat from the crowd,” Duckett would tell former England captain and present cricket correspondent at Sunday Times, Michael Atherton.
Temba Bavuma, at 5’3”, too might be taking the cricket field with that same not-too-pleasant “we’ll see how it goes .. probably not well” feeling. His trauma is deeper, and longer.
Growing up in a society with a history of racial discrimination, the 35-year-old, since the time he made sense of his surroundings, would have been brutally made to realise the two big disadvantages he was born with in a racist society – being Black and being small. For him, skin colour would have resulted in prejudice from birth, height-shaming might have kicked off around adolescence.
Growing up in the Black township of Langa, a Cape Town suburb, Bavuma didn’t let taunts or systemic segregation hinder his pursuit to be a top batsman. His runs would knock down most hurdles, he would prove to the world that boys from townships aren’t born just to run in and bowl fast. They can be graceful batsmen and more importantly, be well-respected and loved leaders of his diverse nation. Today, Bavuma is to his squad of 15 what Nelson Mandela was to millions.
South Africa captain Temba Bavuma plays against India at the Eden Gardens. (Express Photo | Partha Paul)
But still, when the bowler and wicket-keeper are furiously debating a DRS call against him, wondering if the ball that has impacted the pads would have hit the wicket, with the stump microphone invading the privacy of a team huddle, Bavuma gets referred to as a bauna – dwarf in Hindi.
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It can be argued that it wasn’t a sledge but an instinctive reference to the batsman’s short stature. Many will say it was bad-word selection and not a conscious derogatory utterance. But it is still an irony, make it a tragedy, that the unfortunate event happened in a Test, where Bavuma towered over every batsmen in the game.
It was a match where he added many metres to his stature as a batsman who delivers in big games, but he still couldn’t alter his image of a 5’3” male.
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It is anybody’s guess how many more such monumental innings Bavuma would have to play to uncouple his height from his identity. He has been doing this for a while. In 2016, in his seventh Test, he became the first Black South African to score a Test hundred. In the match where England’s Ben Stokes called him “absolute shit”, there were jokes about his height.
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Even when he led South Africa to the World Test Championship title, the most-used celebration picture was of Bavuma wrapped in the South African flag and his tallest team mate, 6’7” Marco Jansen, standing next to him. Was this necessary? When will the world get over its juvenile ‘lambu-chhotu’ caricaturing of humans with varying heights?
Research on height-discrimination takes one to a fascinating book Shortchanged by American author Tanya Osensky. It explains the failure of human evolution to wipe out the disturbing tall-short prejudice.
‘Sociologists have suggested that the importance of height has evolutionary origins, because larger males are more likely to win fights and to attain social dominance,’ Tanya writes. How wrong it is now in the context of sports, but it still exists.
ALSO READ | How Temba Bavuma once responded to sledging and 55 other reasons to respect the Proteas captain
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Time moved on but those prejudices remained. Osensky notes how monarchs always insisted on being called ‘Your Highness’. She also mentions how language has also dutifully chronicled this age-old bias. Tanya writes how ‘we look up’ to those who are tall and attribute positive personality characteristics to them while we ascribe negative traits to those ‘we look down on’.
Temba Bavuma is calm, even soporific, a square silhouette of perfection. (Express Photo by Partha Paul)
Other casual height-discrimination references have silently sneaked into spoken English and stayed there. Short-changed, getting the short end of the stick, small-minded, and belittling are words that give a whiff of negativity. While a ‘bigger person’, ‘riding high’ and ‘making it big’ are all laudatory attributes in a human.
Sports could have done better, it should have got over heightism long back. There are enough 5-something legends to prove that greatness isn’t the virtue of 6-somethings. Sunil Gavaskar, Sachin Tendulkar, Virat Kohli or Diego Maradona, Lionel Messi, Andres Iniesta – none was ever called tall but they were larger-than-life figures.
They have done enough to make height irrelevant, their deeds acting as stilts. But they are still hailed as Little Masters. Why can’t they just be seen as Masters? If age is just a number, why can’t height be the same?
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