What do they know of cricket who only cricket know, asked the great CLR James. He talked of cricket as a prism through which we might view society, and that remains as true now as in 1963, when Beyond a Boundary, his masterwork, was published. But despite the lofty claims those of us who truly love the game might make for it, cricket cannot offer a true reflection of life or of sport in general. Cricket stands apart. Cricket is different.
That’s the first thing to know as we consider a week of an exhilarating Ashes contest, but also the cloud of the damning Independent Commission for Equity in Cricket (ICEC) report. It found what many of us had long discerned: a beautiful game blighted by “widespread and deep-rooted” racism, sexism, elitism and class-based discrimination at all levels.
In cricket, more than any other game, what happens off the field is as important as what happens on it. In football and rugby, both teams contest the same ball. In tennis, rivals volley over a shared net using the same equipment. And yet, cricket sees players act in uniquely opposing ways. Eleven teammates gather on the field with a leather ball to stop two batters from scampering 22 yards to score runs. The objective is inherently exclusionary – to make sure the batters are forced off the field of play and relegated to the sidelines.
Cricket has long reeked of the English obsession with class. Until the 1960s, two tiers of cricketers existed: amateurs, who were called gentlemen and had a Mr before their name in the scorecard, and professionals, who were called players. There were even separate changing rooms. The game still retains an inbuilt bias in favour of batters – a great fixture is marked by an abundance of runs, not the number of wickets taken. In such a stratified game, social mingling over the duration of the match acquires a huge significance. There is the expertise and physical dexterity of sport, but there is something more, a dance of human interaction and social norms.
That is both an opportunity for, and a challenge to, integration.
But this integration plainly does not exist in any meaningful sense in English cricket today, a truth laid bare by the 317-page commission report, which drew evidence from more than 4,000 players, coaches, administrators and fans.
Few players highlight this enduring problem of exclusion and othering better than the England all-rounder Moeen Ali. He is one of two Asian players on the English team, despite South Asians accounting for 26-29% of the game’s adult recreational population in England and Wales.
In 2018, when I wrote his autobiography, titled Moeen, he spoke of the shock on his teammates’ faces when he told them his grandmother’s name was Betty Cox. “Nobody could believe it,” he told me (his grandfather, an immigrant from Mirpur, Pakistan, had married a widow from Birmingham). “I realise when people look at me and think of my origins they would never think I have a family tree which is a bridge between England and Pakistan. At times I do feel boxed in.”
Three years ago, the revelations of another Asian player, Azeem Rafiq, about the shocking racist abuse he received at Yorkshire cricket club sent shock waves through the sport. And yet little seems to have changed. He was called the P-word but people “didn’t think it was wrong”, he said at the time of the racist “banter” directed at him, which has become a feature of the sport’s rotten culture.
On a television debate after Rafiq’s testimony to the digital, culture, media and sport select committee on racism in cricket, I got into an argument with a white caller who could not understand why being called the P-word was different to being called a “pom”. I explained that back in 1981, Chelsea football fans assaulted me while calling me the P-word. They were not indulging in “banter”. But he was still not convinced.
The commission is right to take aim at this culture of minimising discrimination – “it’s not banter or just a few bad apples” causing the problems, the report reads. For too long, senior leaders in cricket have been in denial about race. When I interviewed the veteran cricket administrator Tim Lamb for my book on creating a non-racial sports world, he said he had found no evidence of racism in the game.
When I asked him about Yorkshire having a separate cricket league run by Asian Muslims, he did not see it as a problem. “The fact of the matter is, rightly or wrongly, there are Asian cricketers and Asian clubs that feel more comfortable playing with their own kind,” he said. “I mean there are cultural differences.”
Then he said something that really rocked me: “Throughout our conversation we’ve talked about racist behaviour on the part of white people against black people, but I’m sure you wouldn’t deny that there is reverse racism by non-white people towards white people.”
Of course, racism isn’t the only deep-rooted issue that needs to be stamped out if the game is to move into the 21st century. The England women’s team are yet to play a Test at Lord’s – the home of English cricket, even though men’s teams from Eton and Harrow play annual matches there. When in 2017 England’s women won the World Cup against India, the pavilion at Lord’s was not packed out as it was two years later when the men’s team won the World Cup. Within women’s cricket, racism is also evident. Of the 161 female players at professional level, players are disproportionately white, with only two Black British, four mixed/multiple ethnicity and eight South Asian female players.
Perhaps now, things will change. The England and Wales Cricket Board has called the report’s findings a “seminal moment” for the sport, and has apologised unreservedly. It promised to respond to 44 recommendations within three months. They have a huge task and a moral responsibility.
In India the lotus, the most beautiful of flowers, grows from the muck. It may be too much to ask cricket’s senior leaders to make changes overnight, but there is an opportunity here to improve things for the better and create an inclusive culture that shuns the attitudes of old.
What do we know of cricket? That it lifts the human spirit in so many ways; but also, that it could be so much better.
Mihir Bose is the author of Dreaming The Impossible: The Battle to Create A Non-Racial Sports World
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