Harrison’s cop-out highlights ECB failures
Executive asked to be held accountable over game’s response to racism but hides behind bureaucratic niceties
hchief
When English cricket paused for a moment of reflection last year, reproaching itself for “unconscious bias” and for mirroring the racism in wider society, Tom Harrison delivered an unambiguous statement of intent.
“I actually do want to be held to account on this,” declared the chief executive of the England and Wales Cricket Board. “I want the pressure of accountability, because I think it helps us drive change.”
This of all weeks would seem an apt moment for Harrison to be taken at his word. Yorkshire, the most decorated county in the English game, are in an advanced state of selfimmolation, accused of harbouring a culture of institutional racism.
Azeem Rafiq, the off-spinner referred to as a “P--i” by former team-mate and England international Gary Ballance, has described how such treatment left him contemplating taking his own life. Yorkshire’s sponsors have deserted en masse in horror at the claims. More damning details are likely to emerge during a select committee hearing on Nov 16, when Rafiq is at last able to speak under parliamentary privilege.
A reckoning so profound calls for words of corresponding gravitas from the man at the top. And yet Harrison’s reaction, when pressed on the findings of Yorkshire’s findings of bullying and racial harassment towards Rafiq, was to say: “I have not read the report.” He insists that this position is one of probity, that the ECB acts not just as the game’s governing body but as a regulator, and that it would be unwise for him to comment. Be that as it may, it seems faintly astonishing that the most powerful figure in domestic cricket would not read a document whose conclusions are shaking his sport to its core. It is doubly extraordinary given that it concerns racism, the issue on which Harrison personally pledged to be held to the highest standards.
“It’s not appropriate for me to read it at this point,” he argued. It makes you wonder when he might perhaps deem it suitable. Next month? Next year? The time for Harrison to be speaking out in the strongest terms is now, not at some unspecified future date, when the news cycle moves on and the heat simmers down a touch. There could be no more defining test of his leadership: Harrison, who has run the ECB for almost seven years, has explicitly made anti-racism the cornerstone of his efforts at reform.
Today he presides over a game in turmoil, the most successful county confronting a charge that it is racist from top to bottom. Rafiq and many others had the right to expect him to summon the requisite level of outrage, to promise that what has happened at Headingley can never happen again under his watch. Instead, his response smacked of the classic bureaucratic cop-out.
In mitigation, the ECB has pursued decisive action against Yorkshire, taking the unprecedented step to strip them of international cricket after their “wholly unacceptable” handling of the Rafiq scandal. But a sense persists that its responsibilities extend beyond simply tweaking the England schedule. At a time when it is striving to engage more deeply with the country’s south Asian communities, and when there is an urgent imperative to address the under-representation of non-white players, it needs to illustrate that the sentiment behind its commitment to change is matched with substance.
While few in sport are much minded to take lectures on behaviour from politicians, Alex Sobel, the MP for Leeds North West, made a cogent point about the ECB’S lack of intervention. “The ECB should really be stepping in during a crisis like this, but they don’t seem to have the capacity or the ability – or the will, maybe,” he said.
Roger Hutton, Yorkshire’s outgoing chairman, was more withering, scotching the ECB’S earlier suggestions that it had repeatedly offered to help the county throughout the investigation. “That couldn’t be further from the truth,” he said. Hutton, we should not forget, is a central figure in this infernal mess, a man who until his BBC interview yesterday had said nothing in the 56 days since the summary of Yorkshire’s report was first released.
He is a veritable case study in the art of opaque governance. Yet he touches on a crucial element of this story: the notion that the ECB, with a more concerted approach to demonstrating its anti-racism credentials, could have stopped a crisis from becoming a conflagration.
According to Hutton, it was leant on to help assist a robust inquiry, but “declined”. Still there is no clarion call from the ECB at the time when it is most needed. Instead, it is continuing to hide behind its abstruse talk about regulatory oversight and agreed process, even as the fallout is lapping at the gates of Lord’s.
There is no clarion call when it is needed the most