Latest news with #Gregory
Yahoo
23-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Dog the Bounty Hunter's stepgrandson goes shooting with dad in haunting photos taken years before tragic death
Duane 'Dog the Bounty Hunter' Chapman's late stepgrandson posed with a rifle in haunting photos taken years before his tragic death. Anthony Zecca, notably, died on Saturday at age 13 after allegedly being shot by dad Gregory Zecca in a 'freak accident.' Before Gregory disabled his Instagram, social media users resurfaced pictures of the father-son duo at a shooting range. 'Getting some range time in with our buddies @franktownfirearms,' Gregory told his followers at the time. He and Anthony were all smiles in a since-deleted selfie, with Gregory also showing the then-preteen aiming a gun and flashing a thumbs up. Anthony was shot and killed at his family's Naples, Fla., apartment over the weekend, Page Six confirmed on Sunday. The shooting was reported at 8:08 p.m., and one person was deceased when the Collier County Sheriff's Office deputies arrived at the scene. The tragedy was an isolated incident, the police told us, noting that it is an active investigation with arrests yet to be made. Chapman, 72, and his wife, Francie Frane, confirmed Anthony's passing in a statement to TMZ. 'We are grieving as a family over this incomprehensible tragic accident and would ask for continued prayers as we grieve the loss of our beloved grandson, Anthony,' the couple told the outlet. Chapman's rep has yet to respond to Page Six's request for comment He and his partner have been married since September 2021. Gregory is Frane's son from a previous relationship. Chapman revealed in a 2020 'Dr. Oz Show' appearance that Frane has two sons while speaking about their experience in 'tracking and hunting.' The former reality star, for his part, has welcomed 13 children with six women over the years.
NZ Herald
23-07-2025
- NZ Herald
Khandallah murder trial: What the jury knew about killer daughter Julia DeLuney
The Crown case was that the 53-year-old visited Gregory's home the night of January 24 last year and that, sometime during the hours she was there, she bludgeoned her mother to death with a heavy object, then set up the scene to look as though Gregory had fallen while putting something in the attic. Julia DeLuney with her mother, Helen Gregory. DeLuney told police her mother did not appear badly injured after the supposed fall, and there was only a small amount of blood on the back of her head, so she lay her down on the floor in a spare bedroom and went to get her husband, Antonio DeLuney, so he could help her decide what to do. She claimed that when they arrived back at the house about an hour and a half later, they found the bloody scene. The defence case was that another person broke in while DeLuney was out and killed Gregory. DeLuney sat in the High Court at Wellington for more than four weeks listening to the evidence against her, always sharply dressed and well presented. Her mask of self-control slipped only towards the very end, as Crown prosecutor Stephanie Bishop was telling the jury there was no plausible reason for DeLuney to be checking the skip bin outside her studio apartment multiple times after leaving her mother's house, including in the dark with a torch. Julia DeLuney remained sharply dressed and well presented throughout her trial for the murder of Helen Gregory. Photo / Mark Mitchell 'Our dogs!' DeLuney's voice rang through the room, her eyes narrowed on Bishop. She followed up with a sigh and a loud bang from the dock. Defence lawyer Quentin Duff appeared to allude to this moment in his closing address to the jury. 'Mrs DeLuney has had to sit here and have all sorts of mud thrown at her,' he said. 'Accused of killing a mother that has done nothing but love her and that she has done nothing but love back ... Don't hold against her one little outburst.' Helen Gregory was making plans to celebrate her 80th birthday. There would be a visit to the ballet. They were supposed to be booking the tickets that night. It might be fair to describe Gregory as determined, and perhaps a little eccentric in how she handled her money. She kept large sums of cash stashed around her home in special hiding places because she didn't trust the banks, and she was particular about her routines. She was also fearful of going into a home, and had insisted to family she wanted to remain in her own house. She was described by one witness as a lovely person, who was strong both mentally and spiritually and regularly attended church and prayer meetings. Generous and eager to help those who needed it, she was also modest when it came to her own generosity. Photos of Gregory, shown to the jury through the trial, show her beautifully attired in floral dresses, lipstick neatly applied. One photo, taken on Christmas Day, shows her about to tear open a gift as she half smiles at somebody just out of the frame. Helen Gregory on Christmas Day, in one of the photos presented to the jury. When Detective Senior Sergeant Tim Leitch was preparing to brief his team on the case the morning after Gregory's death, he scrawled a few words in his notebook, prompts for what he wanted to say to the officers helping him investigate. 'A terrible end to a wonderful life,' he wrote. And it was terrible, no matter who you believed: death at the hands of someone she loved, or those of an intruder. Duff described it to the jury in agonising detail. '[DeLuney] didn't know that somebody had taken something that is probably as heavy as that vase,' he said, gesturing to a vase on the exhibit table that police believe was similar to the one thought to have been used in the murder. Duff paused for what felt like an eternity. It may have been about 20 seconds. Then he finished his sentence: 'and smashed her a number of times over the head.' The question the jury had to solve was whether the person who swung that object was DeLuney. The case against her was entirely circumstantial but the Crown had '10 strands' of evidence to convince the jury DeLuney was guilty. 'The circumstantial evidence is so strong that the 10 points or 10 strands are not just threads of a rope, they are like ropes themselves,' Bishop said. Despite the lack of a smoking gun, it would appear the jury agreed. Below are the key points from those 10 strands as they emerged throughout the trial. Defence lawyer Quentin Duff on day one of the trial. Photo / Mark Mitchell The motive – crypto spending, financial strife A glimpse into DeLuney's bank transactions in the year before Gregory's death offered some insight into the likely reason for the killing. Despite her polished exterior, always looking 'fabulous', as her lawyer put it, she was struggling to afford her lifestyle. Forensic accountant Eric Huang gave evidence last week, saying DeLuney did not make enough money to sustain her spending habits without a mystery $75,000 cash injection across the year. His report could not explain where the cash came from, but showed that on some days tens of thousands of dollars in cash were deposited into the account over several smart ATM transactions, minutes apart. DeLuney spent more than $150,000 over that year on cryptocurrencies, and messages between her and Gregory indicated she had also put some of her mother's money into crypto. A witness also alleged Gregory had told her that DeLuney took cash hidden in the home and invested it without Gregory's knowledge. A text exchange between the pair in November 2023 showed DeLuney asking her mother for $10,000. 'Julia, there was only $2700 in my hiding place!!!!!' was the reply. In response, DeLuney told her 'your money is now making money', and said she would be 'delighted' with the result in April. There was some back and forth, with Gregory saying she didn't have enough cash left in her hiding places and would have to transfer money electronically instead. Julia DeLuney at an earlier court hearing, shortly after her arrest in early 2024. Photo / Ethan Griffiths 'Please be careful, when I transfer this I will have zero. I thought I had at least $25,000 in [the] box,' she said. 'I will take care of you. Please trust me. Xoxoxox,' DeLuney replied. In an email just two days before Gregory's death, DeLuney told her mother her money had made a profit of $268,000, attaching a screenshot for proof. But the Crown said this was a lie, and that the screenshot showed someone else's account. DeLuney said she needed more money from Gregory in order to withdraw some of the profit. In her closing address to the jury, Bishop suggested this was an attempt to extract the last of Gregory's money, the end of an 'elaborate fraud', and that it was possible the pair had argued about the money the night of the death, or that Gregory had caught DeLuney searching the house for cash. The telltale bloodstains A grisly scene awaited first responders when they arrived at Gregory's home that night. It was also such an unusual scene that a forensic expert said she knew almost immediately that it was staged. There was blood on the walls, on the bedroom furniture and on Gregory. There was also blood on the top rung of the attic ladder, and in the utility cupboard that the ladder was inside. ESR forensic senior scientist Glenys Knight said that in her opinion, there was no evidence an impact happened inside the cupboard, as DeLuney claimed. If there had been, and if someone was bleeding heavily, she would have expected to see blood drips and bloody handprints where someone had tried to get themselves up. She also suggested the blood patterns didn't support the idea of a fall, explaining that inside the cupboard it was almost like someone had 'poured' blood down the back wall. Other bloodstains appeared to have been applied in a side-to-side motion on the walls, possibly with a piece of fabric, and some of these appeared to have clotted, a process that she estimated would take five to 10 minutes. Blood on the walls outside the utility cupboard in Helen Gregory's house. 'Blood does not come out of the head already clotted,' she said. The blood on the top rung of the ladder also did not make sense, because if Gregory had fallen, it would be more likely that blood would be found at the bottom. Bishop told the jury the blood evidence showed the scene was staged, and that it did not make sense for a random intruder to stick around to stage the scene. She said the burglar would have needed to know DeLuney's story around what happened that night to have staged it in a way that lined up with her account. Luminol testing also returned positive results in the kitchen and DeLuney's car. There was evidence that blood may have been washed away in the kitchen sink, with the luminol test showing splatters all around the bench, and pooled at the plughole and on the plug. There were also imprints of circles found beside the sink, which Knight said she could not rule out coming from the vase if it had been placed there to drain. Police could not find any other household item that matched, but it was close in size to another vase that is believed to be similar to the suspected murder weapon. The view looking up to the attic at Helen Gregory's Khandallah home. Meanwhile, luminol testing came back positive for various parts of DeLuney's car, including the footwells, steering wheel, and over much of the passenger seat. While some of these marks might be explained by DeLuney and her husband having traces of blood on their hands and feet after Gregory was found dead, Bishop said this did not explain the marks on the passenger seat, and suggested this came from a rubbish bag she said may have carried the murder weapon. What was in the mystery rubbish bag? CCTV footage showed DeLuney was the only person to enter or leave by the front of Gregory's property in the time she may have been killed. The footage also showed something in the front passenger seat when DeLuney left the house to get her husband – which the Crown suggested was a yellow council rubbish bag containing the murder weapon and DeLuney's bloodied clothes. She had told police she changed into her mother's clothes before leaving, because her clothes had a small amount of blood on them from her mother's injury. Bishop said CCTV supported the theory that DeLuney took the rubbish bag and put it in the skip bin outside her studio apartment, possibly going back to check on it more than once with a flashlight. The next morning, more CCTV captures DeLuney leaving the apartment complex cradling a black plastic bag, which she took down the road and put into a wheelie bin as it was being emptied by a passing rubbish truck. Julia Deluney and Helen Gregory. Driver Gavin Twist told the court she asked him very nicely if she could put the black plastic bag in the large red rubbish bin he had just emptied. He agreed. 'She was cradling the bag as she put it in the bin,' he said. Footage from the truck shows her lowering the bag carefully down with both hands. When the bag landed at the bottom of the bin, it made a thud, he said. Police searched Spicer's Landfill in Porirua but never found anything they believed to be the bag. Bishop suggested to the jury that DeLuney had taken the yellow bag from the skip bin and stuffed it into the black bag. Duff said an 'ordinary' act of rubbish disposal had simply been turned into something suspicious by police. What was the alternative? If DeLuney didn't kill Gregory, then who did? There was no doubt she had been killed by somebody, and that the attic fall, if it had even happened, did not cause her death. Duff said whoever killed Gregory must have had a very personal hatred for her, or perhaps was 'mad' or on meth. 'I only know that somebody went and beat this beautiful woman, paused, and then came back to beat her again,' he said. He pointed to evidence about a couple living up the road, who said someone had knocked on their door that night and disappeared before they answered, roughly around the time of the death. Police sent somebody to speak to the couple, but ultimately discounted the information as irrelevant to the case. The officer in charge said the house was some distance away – about 250m – from Gregory's, and that there were no other reports about doorknocks or suspicious activity in the area. Crown prosecutor Stephanie Bishop earlier in the trial. Photo / Mark Mitchell Duff said police had developed 'tunnel vision' by that point and should have analysed the evidence further. He suggested a scenario where an intruder knocked on Gregory's patio door while DeLuney was out, and that the injured Gregory opened the door and the attacker burst through, knocking a curtain partly off its railing, and chased and killed Gregory in the bedroom. He also referred to a coffee cup that had been found in an outdoor pot plant that normally hid a set of spare keys for the house, saying more should have been done to find out where the cup came from, and a DNA test should have been done. Bishop has consistently shot down the theory that a burglar or intruder killed Gregory, noting there was no evidence any items had been taken from Gregory's home, despite several items of value being left out in plain view. There was also no other sign of disturbance or intrusion, though Duff argued the disrupted curtain was one such sign. There is no evidence to show if this happened before or during the police scene examination. A loving daughter and brutal killer How did a woman who texted her mother, promising she would take care of her and asking for her trust, then move so sharply in the opposite direction? Bishop pointed to diary entries, where DeLuney spoke about her struggles with money and desire to buy a house, a goal which felt unattainable. 'It's been an awful year so far,' she wrote a couple of weeks before killing Gregory. 'I'm done. Been trying so hard to crack this but as soon as I think it's in my reach it gets taken away again and again.' Helen Gregory was close to celebrating her 80th birthday when she was killed. She painted a picture of a woman not coping with her finances, noting she had a drinking relapse after 12 years of sobriety four months before her mother's death, possibly a sign of how much the struggles were getting to her. 'You will never know exactly what happened that night, but the Crown says ... the elaborate fraud perpetrated on her mother just two days prior to her death is a significant factor,' Bishop said. 'It might go some way to explaining why Julia DeLuney lost complete control and killed her mother that night.' - Additional reporting by Catherine Hutton Melissa Nightingale is a Wellington-based reporter who covers crime, justice and news in the capital. She joined the Herald in 2016 and has worked as a journalist for 10 years.
TimesLIVE
22-07-2025
- Entertainment
- TimesLIVE
All you need to know about Gregory Porter's ' Love is King SA' tour
American singer-songwriter and musician nominee and two-time Grammy Award-winning jazz vocalist Gregory Porter is coming back to South Africa. Showtime Management and Griza Enterprise are set to host the jazz artist's Love is King SA 2025 tour in November. 'For me, music has always been about coming with a humble and honest expression about love and life. South Africa, I'm humbled by your exuberant radiant love,' Gregory said on X while touring the country in 2023. 'Two years later, I return with another tour — a continued celebration of the incredible people of this nation.' Here's what you need to know: WHEN AND WHERE The Love is King SA 2025 Tour begins at GrandWest Casino and Entertainment World, Cape Town on November 12, followed by DP World Wanderers Cricket Stadium on November 15 and closing at Durban's International Convention Centre on November 19. Concerts begin at 8pm. HOW MUCH WILL IT COST? CAPE TOWN: NOVEMBER 12, GrandWest Casino and Entertainment World Ticket prices: R800, R900, R1,000, R1,250, R1,500 JOHANNESBURG: NOVEMBER 15: DP World Wanderers Ticket prices: R800, R1,000, R1,250, R1,500, R1,750, R2,000 DURBAN: NOVEMBER 19 Durban International Convention Centre R700, R800 R900, R1,000, R1,250, R1,500 WHAT TIME DO THE SHOWS START? ALL SHOWS BEGIN AT 8pm Grand West, Cape Town & Durban ICC: Doors open - 7pm Wanderers, Johannesburg: Doors open - 6:30pm Tickets on sale at 9am on Thursday July 24 at or
Daily Mirror
21-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Mirror
Tragic life of Dog the Bounty Hunter - tortured childhood, wedding horror and shock deaths
As Dog the Bounty Hunter's step-grandson dies in a 'tragic accident,' we take a look at the personal heartbreaks the US TV star has endured throughout his life American TV personality Dog the Bounty Hunter is in mourning after his step-grandson Anthony Zecca was killed in an horrific accident at the weekend. The shocking incident in which the 13 year old boy - the son of Dog's stepson Gregory - was shot and killed i s believed to have happened at around 8pm on Saturday July 20 in an apartment in Naples, Florida. Dog and his wife Francie released a statement to TMZ through a representative. It read: "We are grieving as a family over this incomprehensible tragic accident and would ask for continued prayers as we grieve the loss of our beloved grandson, Anthony." Gregory, who is Francie's child from a previous marriage, is part of Dog's bounty hunting crew. He became part of Dog's personal life when he married Francie in 2021. Gregory has previously shared his passions for guns in social media posts. In one he is seen showing Anthony how to use a rifle while at a shooting range. This latest tragedy is not the first Dog, whose real name is Duane Chapman, has endured. Here we take a look at the heartbreak and drama that has filled the 72 year old's eventful life. Childhood abuse Duane was raised with his three siblings by their church minister mother and their father who was a US Army officer in Denver, Colorado. In his 2017 memoir, You Can Run But You Can't Hide, he claimed his dad abused him with beatings which he thought was to toughen him up and was a normal way to be treated. "Because of my religious upbringing, I thought my dad was punishing me for being a terrible sinner," he wrote, according to The Express. "Until very recently, I never understood that none of his abuse was my fault. I just thought that was how all dads treated their sons." He said he was expected to take the beatings like a man: "But I wasn't a man. I was a young boy looking for love and approval from my father. I was desperate for his affection, so I ignored the pain," he wrote. Murder sentence Back in 1976 a young Dog was convicted of first-degree murder relating to the death of Jerry Oliver in Pampa, Texas. He was waiting in a car when his friend shot and killed an alleged drug dealer while trying to buy cannabis. Despite Duane not directly being involved in the murder, the law in Texas states that anyone indirectly involved can be charged. He was found guilty of first-degree murder and sentenced to five years in prison but only served 18 months. Commenting on the conviction he said: "It's something that follows you the rest of your life, no matter who you become or who you are. I'm not proud of it." Afterwards he chose to pursue a career upholding the law through bounty hunting. He shot to fame starring in A&E show Dog The Bounty Hunter, which followed him as he tried to catch bail jumpers. The show ran for eight seasons from 2004. However because of his conviction he is forbidden from using firearms, which is why he uses a taser instead of a gun in his work. Daughter's tragic death On the morning of his wedding to fifth wife Beth Smith, Dog was told his 23-year-old daughter, Barbara Katie Chapman, had died the day before in Alaska. She was a passenger in a stolen SUV that crashed into a tree after leaving the road. The driver also died in the accident and authorities suspected drugs or alcohol may have been a factor. The family decided to go ahead with the wedding to honour Barbara's memory. She left behind a nine year old son Travis Drake Lee. Grandson's 'abuse' Dog was temporarily given custody of Travis after a tape was handed to court which allegedly contained evidence Travis was being physically abused by his father, Travis Mimms. The TV star previously said: "To hear the audiotape of my grandson being abused was torture." Dog and wife Beth took care of the child but insisted they didn't want to take him away from his dad: "I want him [Mimms Sr.] to take parenting classes. We had to get Travis [Jr.] out of that situation," he said. Long lost son In 1994 Dog discovered he had a son he knew nothing about with ex-girlfriend Debbie White. Christopher Hecht was born in 1972, while Duane was in prison. After Debbie died by suicide in 1978, Christopher was adopted by Keith and Gloria Hecht. She said she initially told Dog to keep away but that he contacted him anyway. "He then reached out to Christopher for the first time when he was 19," she told The Sun. "When he learned Duane was his father, he was ecstatic. They started a relationship." Christopher has had his own share of struggles and scrapes with the law. In 2021 he was sentenced to three years in jail in Colorado for a menacing charge. Dog vowed to help his son when he was released from prison. Death of beloved wife Beth Chapman In 2017 Beth was diagnosed with stage two throat cancer. Her battle with the disease was documented in A&E special Dog & Beth: Fight of Their Lives. After initial treatment she was given the all-clear, but the cancer returned in 2018. On June 26 2019, Beth was put into a medically induced coma and died aged 51 at The Queen's Medical Centre in Honolulu. Dog announced her death on Twitter. He wrote: "It's 5:32 in Hawaii, this is the time she would wake up to go hike Koko Head mountain. Only today, she hiked the stairway to heaven. We all love you, Beth. See you on the other side." Although he vowed to never marry again, less than a year after she passed, Dog had proposed to his new girlfriend, Francie Frane. The couple connected through their shared grief - Francie's husband Bob had died not long before Beth. "We understood the pain that the other one was feeling and [in] those tough days and moments, we helped each other stand up," Francie told Entertainment Tonight. "We could cry with each other and talk about what we were feeling. We were able to walk alongside each other through the pain and heartbreak and it brought us together in this amazing way." They married in 2021. Death of colleague David Robinson was a member of Dog's crew. He died suddenly aged 50 in 2022 while on a Zoom call. His ex wife later confirmed the cause of death was critical coronary artery disease. Dog said he was "shocked and saddened" by his co-star and "right-hand man's" passing.
Scroll.in
18-07-2025
- Sport
- Scroll.in
A new book on India vs Australia cricket addresses racism and violent fan reactions
Out of the unprecedented actions of Mohammed Siraj in objecting to the behaviour of a group at the 2021 Sydney Test has emerged a discussion worth having about the rights and responsibilities of the modern live fan. Yet it is also almost impossible to generalise about them. Crowds are diverse; they are fickle; they are volatile. They do not merely observe the play; they observe one another, and unite or differ. They like to be noticed; they can also object to it. There is also in Australia an ancient tradition of raucous demotic demonstration, even in cricket, and especially at the Sydney Cricket Ground. It was the scene of our first riot in 1879. It was the scene, 50 years ago, of the first abandonment of a Test field due to a physical altercation with a player, England's John Snow. A hundred years ago, meanwhile, there was another incident in an Ashes Test which has long fascinated me – and which affords some parallels with l'affaire Siraj. An English amateur vice-captain, Rockley Wilson, wrote an article for London's Daily Express deploring the behaviour of a Sydney crowd towards his teammate Jack Hobbs, whom they had heckled for his slow movement in the field when he was publicly known to be suffering a leg strain. There might then have been no internet, but there was a lively trade in cables to Australia of sections of the Fleet Street press, and Wilson's comments were quickly played back to their subject. An account in Melbourne's Herald gives the flavour of the response when Wilson came out to bat. Everywhere else round the ground thoughts were forcibly expressed. 'Liar! Liar! Liar!' roared the spectators. The roar became louder and louder as Wilson neared the batting crease. 'What about your lying cable?' was called as Wilson went to the end at which the bowling began. When Wilson took strike… There was a long babel of noise – 'Why don't you play the game?' 'Hook him on the jaw, Warwick.' 'Hit him on the head, Gregory, and wake him up.' 'Never mind the wicket, Gregory, crack him.' This worked a charm. Wilson, clearly unsettled, smartly got outstumped, amid widespread schadenfreude. But then, as The Herald continued, something curious happened. Hobbs' name appeared on the scoring board… When he did appear, there was a scene never before approached on the Sydney Cricket Ground. People stood and cheered frantically, the clapping was tremendous, and all round the ground three cheers for Hobbs were called for, and spontaneously given… and continued long after. The members and the grandstand and the hill patrons were all in it. What was this? A tacit admission that Wilson had pricked their consciences? A desire to be seen as magnanimous in their own and English eyes? Illustrative of people's innate desire to join in with the prevailing sentiment? Different spectators that day would probably have given different answers. In those days, of course, we were most sensitive to English sensibilities, and also English condescension. Sport, like Australia, was a monoculture; it loomed large and reinforced the status quo. Times have changed, in some respects, our attitudes to crowds have not kept up with their growing complexity. What transpired during the Third Test involved a dark-skinned cricketer with a poor background in a rich team from a country both stunningly rich and terribly poor. The shame is that the incident immediately bogged down in a mindless literalism, led by the 'you-ca n't-say-anything-anymore' crowd who demanded a transcript featuring explicit racial epithets, otherwise it's all WOKE, FAKE NEWS etc. It is not a particularly deep reading of the scenario. For a start, the Indian objection is cumulative. It is due to the long-term boorishness of Sydney crowds. They were invited to report an instance if they heard such; Siraj did. And frankly, who would willingly soak up such prolonged stupidity? Any reader who thinks so is invited to forward their work address: I'll be happy to follow them all day, shouting a drunken joke about their name, taking pleasure in their misfortune and discomfiture. For another thing, racial epithets are not a precondition of racism. On the contrary, racism can be most pernicious where it is politest. The majority judgments in Plessy v Ferguson, the foundational documents of American segregation, are superbly eloquent; the terms of the Wannsee Protocol for the 'Preparation of the Final Solution of the European Jewish Question' are smoothly bureaucratic; the mumbo jumbo of eugenics masked itself with a tone of science and learning. There is also such a thing as racism of tone. A fair-skinned person addressing a dark-skinned person with a note of contempt or mockery carries an awful weight of history. The fair-skinned person is unlikely to grasp this, having never had to think otherwise, having never had to suffer being stereotyped or derided merely on the basis of their complexion. They may not intend offence – most, I suspect, would recoil at the idea. But it would cost them nothing to consider how they might be heard. Now for some whataboutisms. What about the Barmy Army and their treatment of Steve Smith and David Warner in England in 2019? Yes, it was disgustingly stupid; it also ruined the Edgbaston Test for many fans, English as well as Australian. The Barmy Army is more sinned against than sinning, but they took this demonstration of allegiance far too far, and should have been more consistently called out on it. Good. I'm glad we had this little chat. What about the young men whose behaviour was called out at the SCG? Were they not 'scapegoated'? This objection is not unreasonable. They may well have been held responsible for the misdeeds of others, and singled out because of the thinness of the crowd, for on other days their chants and cries might have been submerged in the general hubbub. Yet they appear to have suffered no reputational damage. No media jackals are in pursuit; no PC mob has accused them of cultural appropriation for wearing Hawaiian shirts. We do not know who they are. We do not know where they went, although one report is that they were simply encouraged to move elsewhere. It is hard, therefore, to argue that their civil liberties were infringed. Their treatment, at least so far, appears to have been perfectly moderate and proportional. What about Yabba? Yabba, for those who don't know, was the nickname of SH Gascoigne, a Balmain rabbitoh who, through the 1920s and 1930,s was the personification of Australian barracking, drawing crowds to the Hill simply for his own booming voice and acerbic wit. In 2008, he was commemorated in a bronze cast in the Victor Trumper Stand. 'By today's juvenile standards,' erupted a heckler of this column a couple of days ago, 'it's a wonder they haven't demolished the statue of Yabba.' This is perfectly bogus. Yabba loved cricket. He patronised Test matches and grade games alike. He drank little; he did not swear or curse. His declared enemies were boring batsmen ('Whoa! He's bolted') and inaccurate bowling ('Your length is lousy but you bowl a good width'). He ribbed everyone alike; he developed strong affinities for visiting players like Patsy Hendren, Arthur Gilligan and the aforementioned Jack Hobbs. When Hobbs played his last Test in Australia, he made a point of going to the Hill to shake Yabba's hand. Yabba, according to Richard Cashman's canonical treatise on Australian cricket spectating, 'Ave a Go, Yer Mug!', even liked women's cricket when introduced to it and refrained from his usual boisterousness. 'Why should I?' he asked. 'The ladies are playing all right for me. This is cricket, this is. Leave the girls alone.' Some readers will probably regard this as making him unbearably woke. So Yabba is under no threat at all. In fact, we could all do with being a bit more like him, he who supported honest effort in good spirit by whomever caught his eye, setting an example of seeing through the cricketer to the cricket itself. One last thing: what goes around comes around. Remember Rockley Wilson? He went on to teach at Winchester, where one of his students was none other than Douglas Jardine. When Jardine was appointed England's captain ahead of the Bodyline series, he confessed a deep foreboding. 'We shall win the Ashes,' Wilson prophesied. 'But we may lose a Dominion.' He wasn't far off. Excerpted with permission from Indian Summers: Australia versus India, Cricket's Battle of the Titans, Gideon Haigh, Westland.
