England’s turn to hold up a mirror to cricket

The ICEC report titled “Holding Up A Mirror To Cricket” details incidents of racism, sexism and classism at every level of English cricket

The England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) has issued an unreserved apology to “anyone who has ever been excluded from cricket or made to feel like they don’t belong", promising to “use this moment to reset cricket”, responding to the findings of a report detailing incidents of racism, sexism and classism at every level of English cricket. “Cricket should be a game for everyone, and we know that this has not always been the case,” said ECB chairman Richard Thompson. “Powerful conclusions within the report also highlight that for too long women and black people were neglected. We are truly sorry for this.”

Apart from pulling up the ECB on several instances of racism and gender-based disparity, the report questions the underrepresentation of cricketers who attended state schools.

Late on Monday, the Independent Commission for Equity in Cricket (ICEC) published a 317-page report, titled “Holding Up A Mirror To Cricket”. With a foreword from former British prime minister John Major, the report curates details of interviews of over 4000 players, coaches, administrators and fans to highlight the deep-seated discrimination within the game.

DEEP-ROOTED DISCRIMINATION

“Our findings are unequivocal,” said ICEC chair Cindy Butts. “Racism, class-based discrimination, elitism and sexism are widespread and deep-rooted. The game must face up to the fact that it’s not banter or just a few bad apples. Discrimination is both overt and baked into the structures and processes within cricket. The stark reality is cricket is not a game for everyone.”

The commission was constituted in March 2021 in the wake of the Black Lives Matter movement, although the pot had already been stirred by events of the previous year when Azeem Rafiq, a British cricketer of Pakistani origin, revealed details of institutional racism at Yorkshire, one of England’s top cricket county clubs. Apart from pulling up the ECB on several instances of racism and gender-based disparity, the report also questions the underrepresentation of cricketers who attended state schools.

Among the report's key findings are: the existence of widespread racism with 87% of people of Pakistani and Bangladeshi heritage, and 82% of Indian and 75% of Black interviewees saying they experienced discrimination; the fact that women’s teams are “frequently demeaned, stereotyped and treated as second-class” and how the England women’s team are yet to play a Test at Lord’s; and rampant elitism with students of top schools and universities such as Eton and Harrow and Oxford and Cambridge referring to students from other institutions as “peasants”.

SWEEPING RECOMMENDATIONS

The report ends with 44 recommendations to “transform the game’s culture and, in some cases, to redesign the systems that govern and operate cricket.” At the structural level, the commission has exhorted ECB to undertake an exhaustive examination of class and gender barriers, make the complaints policy more transparent, and publish an updated State of Equity in Cricket report every three years. It has sought equal pay for men and women at the domestic level by 2029 and international level by 2030, recommended abandoning elitist annual fixtures in favour of national finals’ days for university teams and U-15 competitions, and asked that the career path of cricketers be made more inclusive and transparent.

This isn’t the first time a cricket board has been pulled up for discrimination, misdemeanor or ethical and cultural malpractice. Six months into the 2018 Cape Town ball-tampering scandal which saw severe bans being handed to Steve Smith, David Warner and Cameron Bancroft, an independent review found Cricket Australia (CA) to be “arrogant” and “controlling”, accusing it of nurturing “strong systemic and organisational input” that led to the scandal in March.

In December 2021, South Africa’s Social Justice and Nation-Building (SJN) commission released a report that accused Cricket South Africa (CSA) of deliberately discriminating against players on the basis of race, apart from pointing out “procedural” flaws in the appointments of former players Mark Boucher and Graeme Smith as head coach and director of cricket respectively. The Indian board too went through an administrative churn in the wake of the IPL match-fixing scandal in 2013, with the Lodha Committee recommending sweeping reforms.