English cricket racism row pains Yorkshire Asians
For Asians, it confirms what we already knew. There’s institutions where Muslims and Asians can’t progress because those running the institutions aren’t prepared to come out of their box.
Ibrahim Suleman
BRADFORD, United Kingdom: A hilly landscape dotted with serried terraced housing, mill chimneys, church spires and mosque minarets reflects the industrial past and multicultural present of Bradford.
But a racism row at local county cricket team Yorkshire has shattered trust between the club and its diverse fanbase in the northern English city.
Yorkshire County Cricket Club’s mishandling of a report that found former player Azeem Rafiq suffered ‘racial bullying and harassment’ has plunged the club into crisis, prompting the loss of sponsors, its chairman and the right to host major matches.
Broader issues of racism and inequality have struck a chord with Yorkshire’s large, cricketloving Asian communities.
“For Asians, it confirms what we already knew. There’s institutions where Muslims and Asians can’t progress because those running the institutions aren’t prepared to come out of their box,” Ibrahim Suleman, a 35-year-old civil servant born to Indian parents, told AFP.
Bradford was one of England’s most deprived areas in a 2019 UK government study, with employment, housing and education statistics comparing unfavourably with other parts of the country.
Given that more than one-fifth of Bradfordians are of Pakistani origin – England’s highest figure – and almost a quarter identified as Muslim in the last published census, inequality disproportionately affects minorities.
“The country’s going backwards,” said 54-year-old cricket coach Haqueq Siddique, whose Pakistani father moved to Bradford in the 1960s to work in a mill.
“We’ve had austerity, Brexit, Covid, inner-city unemployment – we don’t need cricket creating more resentment.”
According to governing body the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB), in 2018 Britons of south Asian heritage represented six percent of England and Wales’ population but one-third of its recreational cricketers.
Yet minorities are underrepresented at playing, coaching and board levels and it was only in 1991 that traditionalist Yorkshire allowed players born outside the county to represent them.
Mohan Lal Mistry, 60, remembered Asians being mockingly labelled as shopkeepers or terrorists, and enduring ‘shocking’ racial abuse in Yorkshire in the 1970s.
“It’s nothing compared to now. The tragedy is, 50 years on, we are still here,” said the Leeds City Council employee.
Pakistan-born Taj Butt, 63, chairs the all-Asian Quaid-eAzam league, which was founded in 1980 to allow immigrants to play competitive cricket as ‘in your face’ racism gave them ‘no hope’ of joining mainstream Yorkshire leagues at the time.
Siddique said children from Asian backgrounds have less access to funding, facilities and coaching than white British counterparts from the grassroots level onwards, causing unequal representation to blight all age groups.