Scottish sport set for summit after racism report

SPORTSCOTLAND will meet with leaders of at least 25 governing bodies on Tuesday to discuss the findings of a damning report into racism within Cricket Scotland.

The national agency is keen to ensure other sports are doing all they can to tackle racism and provide equal opportunities after an independent review found Cricket Scotland failed 29 of 31 indicators of institutional racism and only partially met the other two criteria.

The testing structure, devised by independent report authors Plan4Sport, will form the basis of self-assessments that the other sporting bodies will be encouraged to undertake.

Sportscotland chief executive Stewart Harris said: “We will assess each sport individually. It’s important that we take that time to do that and the first step is Tuesday.

“We will say: ‘Here’s the report, here is what it is saying about Cricket Scotland, here’s how it was assessed, can you now take that away, have a good look at it, discuss it with your teams, and we will have a further discussion later on.

“Because it is important that we absolutely learn the lessons from this.”

Plan4Sport managing director Louise Tideswell said: “I would hope any governing body of sport could assess itself using those indicators and determine whether they need some help.

“It’s not for me to say whether there is a problem in another sport because I don’t know.

“No sport wants to be in the day that we are having today. I hope no sport is ever having a day like this again. But there is an opportunity to learn from the review findings and to use those indicators to make sure we don’t have another day like we are having today.”

Sportscotland commissioned Plan4Sport in December after former internationals Qasim Sheikh and Majid Haq made allegations of racism against Cricket Scotland in November last year.

However, both had been sidelined from the Scotland squad immediately after publicly claiming that race was a factor in team selections.