Cricket isn't racist

We’re less than a week from another Ashes series down under but we’ve all the shite that’s gone on in the world since the last home series in 2019 even this pinnacle of sporting events holds less significance in my life than it once did.  Once it starts I’ll be willing England to do well, my ‘favourite’ Ashes win is the 2010/11 series down under, oh how I enjoyed that!  On that tour, led by Strauss, England had three tough preparation games against decent state sides which allowed them to become battle hardened.  Unsurprisingly this kind of preparation has not been made available on subsequent tours so this time England opted to play against themselves by including members of the Lions squad.  Unfortunately bad weather meant there was little actual play and England will go into the first test under cooked.

Australia have been disrupted too but they are and always will be difficult to beat at home, England need their best XI on the field at the top of their games if they are to stand a chance.  If Jofra Archer had made the trip I’d be more hopeful.  But I think we do have a better chance than four years ago, we certainly have a better bowling attack with height from Broad and Robinson along with pace from Wood and Stokes,as well as skill and accuracy from Anderson and Woakes.  As usual it won’t matter what the bowlers do if we can’t score 400+ runs regularly, our batting relies too heavily on Joe Root and that could well be the problem if other batsmen can’t stand up and make a name for themselves.

The first test at Brisbane is always crucial, if England lose at the Gabba then I don’t think we can come back even over a five test series.  If we avoid defeat then the pressure of expectation will transfer and we are in with a shout.  The traditional Gabba wicket will be fast and bouncy so England should pick a team that suits which for me would mean leaving out a legend, even if just for this one match.

Burns, Hameed, Malan, Root, Stokes, Pope, Buttler, Wood, Robinson, Broad, Leach.

England players may have been further distracted by events at home and cricket fans can’t have missed the great furore of recent weeks, it seems true to say that former Yorkshire player Azeem Rafiq was treated badly by his county and with ignorance by some of his colleagues.  But is it fair to brand cricket in this country as racist?  I don’t think so.

The situation at Yorkshire CC looks bad and for the outsider it’s not hard to believe there would be prejudice at a county club that has had internal strife for as long as I can remember.  All the stars of the sixties were renowned for bickering amongst themselves and at least two famous captains left the club to play elsewhere.  The Yorkshire spirit of stubbornness, abrasiveness and blind faith obviously carries on today, Gary Balance in particular comes across as a pig and I wonder if his exclusion from the England set up was based purely on form.  It’s easy to believe in back room wrongdoings and plain racism at Headingly when the number of British Asians who have represented the county is so embarrassingly low.

But as with anything in life when the media gets involved things go to shit and the witch hunt was inevitable.  Somewhere there are faceless mercenary scum in ‘Fleet Street’ trawling reams of historic social media in the hope of finding a tree from which to lynch someone.  The result is many embarrassed players and ex players having to apologise for ignorant utterances that only have meaning when given full context.  These comments are stupid, ignorant, misguided, probably drunken and not remotely funny but not enough to brand these people racist, which in many cases might be unfair.

Michael Vaughan was named by Rafiq and further evidence supported the claims that were made.  Vaughan’s initial response did little to help, it was ill judged and possibly typical of the YCC mentality.  Since then Vaughan has been put on gardening leave by the BBC but has been supported by ex team mates like Monty Panesar and Mark Butcher.  I loved Vaughan the cricketer and captain but I can’t stand his arrogant, deliberately combative and obviously fake media persona.  I won’t miss his smug voice on the BBC but I do feel he’s been treated harshly.  In the meantime, bring back Boycott!  An outspoken Yorkshireman, what could possibly go wrong?

Elsewhere in the English game other players at other clubs have been splattered by flying shit but there doesn’t seem to be anything close to the situation at Yorkshire.  However the whole history of cricket is marked by prejudice in some form.  Historically in this country the batsmen were all amateur ‘gentlemen’ from privileged backgrounds whilst the bowlers were ‘players’of working class stock.  Class prejudice prevented many players from being picked for England as often as they deserved, renowned fast bowler Fred Trueman being one, yet another outspoken Yorkshireman.  It is hard to believe that the annual ‘Gentlemen vs Players’ match was still being held at Lords as recently as the sixties.  

The England team was being selected by gin soaked officials and unsuitable, axe grinding ex players right up until the late nineties, Devon Malcolm for example should have played far more tests for England and Ray Illingworth (another outspoken character from guess where?) should never have been team manager.  It was not until the Duncan Fletcher (Zimbabwean) Nasser Hussein (Indian descent) era did England cricket start picking purely on merit and our team has been competitive against all nations ever since.  Moeen Ali and Adil Rashid were key players in the 2019 world cup winning team; during the celebrations it was noticeable that the Muslim players were given a moment to remove themselves from the scene before the champagne was sprayed.  But in hindsight, should it have been sprayed at all?  Even so there is no evidence of racism amongst the England set up and this has been the case for many years.

It’s a bit embarrassing to admit that Football – the not even remotely cerebral sport of the masses is ahead of Cricket when it comes to dealing with racism.  It was good to see players taking the knee and defying the government earlier this year.  Just a shame racism has yet to be stamped out amongst football supporters.  I’ve been to international and domestic cricket matches at eight grounds in seven cities around the country and have never heard anything remotely racist from the crowds.  (The same can’t be said for Australia vs West Indies at the SCG in 1991, that was like being stuck in the 1970’s.) Cricket may be behind some other sports but that does not make our sport racist and as already said there is no other English county tainted in the same way as Yorkshire.

Now the dust is being allowed to settle there is still one question I’d like to see answered.  When Cricket; administrators, players and pundits are being called to account, how can they be judged when the Prime Minister of this country is yet to be held to account for his own blatant, published racist past?  There’s the real problem, sport isn’t racist and cricket certainly isn’t but sadly society still is.