Thursday, December 05, 2013

Cricket Australia needs to learn how to apologise





The art of issuing a graceful apology seems to have passed Cricket Australia by. This was their "apology" for their earlier crass tweet showing some Sikhs as teletubbies and calling on the real Monty Panasar to "stand up". It was a foolish, unfunny and dim-witted tweet and the Australians were rightly castigated for having done it.

The "apology" is almost a case study in how NOT to apologise. "Any offence caused" is the classic cop out. It suggests not, as was the case, that offence was definitely caused. It leaves room for doubt. The word "Any" implies that they believe it's possible that no offence was caused. 

"That was certainly not our intention" is equally facile. I doubt that anyone would accuse Australia's governing body of wanting intentionally to cause offence - so why state that it wasn't the intention to do this. Nobody is saying it was ! 

Cricket Australia is guilty of stupidity and they have compounded their foolishness with an ill-thought through "apology". What should they have said? Well they should not have suggested that there was doubt about the offence caused. And they should specifically have apologised to Monty Panasar. Like this (140 character limit applies):

CA apologises unreservedly for having caused offence with an inappropriate Tweet about Monty Panasar and have said sorry to him personally.

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