- The Brutal Reality of Discrimination in English Cricket
- Historical Baggage and the Legacy of Inequities
- Media and Political Class’s Role in Derailing Diversity
You may wish to take a seat for this section. A sport created and codified to allow wealthy white landowners to wager against each other. And then exported at gunpoint with the promise that it would civilize savage peoples, may not be so progressive after all.
How could this have possibly occurred? Who should we speak with about this? And who, exactly, is asking?
The Independent Commission for Equity in Cricket’s report on systemic prejudice in English cricket will be widely interpreted. An alarm message. A boundary in the dunes. A humiliating experience. What it represents to those who have been arguing this point for many years is a type of historical artifact: documentary proof that English cricket’s in-built prejudice against women, people of color, and people from poorer backgrounds has been a lived reality for many people for decades, if not generations.
In its analysis of the problem and its proposed solutions, it is above all a document that is brutally honest.
The England and Wales Cricket Board’s initial response, a comprehensive apology for the wrongdoings that occurred under its control, may initially appear as a corporate whitewash. Nonetheless, even a few years ago, the notion that the national governing body would acknowledge its complicity in a racist and sexist system would have been deemed implausible. In this instance, diagnosis can be the initial step of treatment.
The ICEC provides concrete data to support decades of speculations and anecdotes. 87% of respondents with Pakistani or Bangladeshi ancestry, 82% of respondents with Indian ancestry, and 75% of black respondents reported confronting discrimination in the game. The real clincher, however, is that the vast majority lacked trust in a game that was supposed to protect them: the belief that cricket’s authorities, the white male captains and coaches and chief executives and board chairs who hold all the power in the game, would instinctively favor the status quo.
South Asians make up 28% of the recreational player population, but only 2.8% of executive-level positions in the sport.
A Sport England survey determined that black participation was so minimal as to be statistically insignificant. In 2021, 58% of England’s male cricketers were privately educated, compared to just 7% of the general population. Anyone who has pointed this out over the years has been met with a wall of complacency and silence. A modern version of the classic Henry Newbold poem “Play up! Play up! And enjoy yourself!” After all, we are in England. We do not discuss these topics.
First, many people see this as proof that the world is working well. Your one black acquaintance constitutes an alliance. Your publication’s inclusion of a female cricket writer increases its diversity. And your country is progressive due to your British Asian prime minister. And your team’s sole working-class male Test captain serves as its representative. For these individuals, there has long been a form of selective blindness: an image of English cricket as a kind of idyllic safe space, a world of village greens and decent chaps, one of whom is named Khan, so put that in your pipe and smoke it.
It is a malady that is nearly as old as England itself, and perhaps the most devastating sections of the report deal with cricket’s historical baggage, the legacy of Victorian Britain and the slave trade, and the inequities that were built into the game from its very inception.
“Cricket must acknowledge more openly that its history is rife with tensions and social conflicts, even histories of brutality and oppression,” states the report.
For some, this will seem like a statement of the obvious. It may be the first time somebody in power has said it.
Moreover, it is not necessary to look back centuries to see how cricket’s original transgression continues to influence the sport today. The Independent praised the fact that England’s (all-white) pace attack “never once resembled a United Nations strike force” in 1995. In the same year, Surrey’s chief executive Glyn Woodman boasted about the steps he had taken to discourage British West Indies supporters from attending the Oval Test.
“Twenty years ago, certain areas of land were virtually off-limits,” he said. Because tickets have been sold in advance, they can no longer sit wherever they wish. And lest you think that even this is ancient history. Eton and Harrow’s exclusivity at Lord’s is one of the sport’s most divisive topics.
Similarly, the 2020 debate sparked by Black Lives Matter and Azeem Rafiq has been maliciously diverted away from a conversation about meaningful change and towards the more headline-friendly terrain of witch hunts, who said what to whom, and who is a bigot, whatever that means. One of the report’s more understandable blind spots is the role of the media and political class in actively attempting to derail the cause of diversity to validate and provoke the prejudices of its older white male constituency (or “Type K individuals,” as the report so deliciously labels them). In contrast, the commission’s decision to anonymize all evidence provides a glimpse into “the impact of media reporting on those discussing discrimination in cricket, [which] was often alarming and profound” The relentless pursuit of Rafiq by the right-wing media comes to mind.
Undoubtedly, many of the same individuals will now advocate for an end to English cricket’s reign of shame. Sorry. No one may infer a conclusion from this.
Nobody is allowed to advance until everyone is allowed to advance. Nobody is permitted to argue “stick to cricket” This information is a joke. Are international airfares too expensive? Should they be referred to as “batters” or “batsmen”? Is the membership of your county truly emblematic of the entire region? How can we prevent age-group selections from being based on which parents can afford padding and gloves? When your fast bowler with a history of racist tweets verbally abuses a Muslim opponent during an Ashes Test, do you ask questions or simply presume you know the answers?
The response to this report will be harsh and merciless. Those who desire to remain blind will avoid seeing at all costs. But the time for timidity has long since passed. From the very beginning, English cricket was conceived as a Type K activity: a game managed by affluent white men for the benefit of affluent white men and defined and written about by affluent white men. Unsurprisingly, these wealthy white males enjoy the current state of affairs. In many respects, however, English cricket has brought this conflict upon itself. The bare minimum it can do as compensation is to win it.
