EX-ASIAN LEAGUE CHIEF: IT’S WORSE THAN SQUARE ONE. I DON’T HAVE HOPE OF THEM REACHING OUT...

A GLASS ceiling still exists for cricketers of South Asian descent in Yorkshire — and the proposed takeover of Yorkshire CCC by the Colin Graves-backed consortium is unlikely to help it to disappear.

That’s the view of Taj Butt (above), former chairman of Yorkshire’s largest Asian cricket league and still one of its senior officials.

Butt said: “We are back to square one and honestly I’m not sure we’ve achieved anything since Azeem Rafiq spoke about the issues.

“We were hopeful and excited that it wasn’t going to be the case.

“Being involved at a grassroots level, we can see the talent coming through and we know there’s a huge amount of interest — more and more young people in the South Asian community are playing the game.

“It’s only right that they would come through to the highest level. So it’s disappointing that with Yorkshire we’re not seeing that reflected at a county level.

“We have players playing at local-league level, players playing at regional level, but there is still a glass ceiling that exists for the South Asian community.”

The Quaid-e-azam Cricket League was established in 1980 as a result of some Yorkshire clubs in the 1970s refusing to play against sides predominantly made up of players of South Asian descent.

Butt would argue that precious little has changed in the interim — even after the racism scandal that brought one of world cricket’s greatest clubs to its knees.

Now, with Yorkshire members having a matter of weeks to decide on the direction taken by their club, Butt argues that the rhetoric of the past two years has delivered very little change.

And that the issues and barriers facing the Rafiqs and Adil Rashids of the future are still there and not budging. No matter how many times the club apologises.

“Since Lord Patel [former Yorkshire chairman] left in March 2023 we’ve not seen any changes whatsoever at the club,” said Butt. “The only positive things that have come out of it have been seen at a recreational level, which is run by the Yorkshire Cricket Board.

“We’ve got much better contacts with them, so in terms of the recreational game, the relationships are better.

“As far as the club itself goes, new people come in but we’ve really just moved from one clique to another.

“There are some people of colour in there now but we’ve not really seen any progress. The proposed takeover is clearly a backward step for the organisation.

“Other than Lord Patel, we haven’t heard anyone else admit that there is a problem with racism that needs to be tackled.

“What would my message to the club be? They had a huge opportunity to recognise the problems and do something about it.

“I hope the chairman admits the issues and reaches out. We need action. Will it happen? I’m not holding out much hope, no.”