COACHES HAVE NO IDEA THE BARRIERS ASIAN KIDS FACE
However proud we feel about the multicultural nature of the england team who won the world Cup, the lack of diversity within our domestic structure, highlighted by Sportsmail’s research, makes for damning reading.
The grim numbers show problems in desperate need of solving.
Modern Britain is a multicultural society but we are not reflecting that across the 18 counties.
The only thing I would say to temper this is that it’s only been two years since the eCB launched their South Asian programme to forge better connections.
Yes, you could argue that something should have been done sooner but it would be churlish to be critical of positive action. Let’s accept these things need time.
So what can be done now? well, whenever you look at sport, you need to look to its opposite ends simultaneously. To the top, at the people making the decisions, and to the bottom, your ingredients — the youngsters who are playing. Solving issues at one end does not solve those at the other.
For example, how are you building relationships in the wider community? well, from my own experiences at essex, I would have to say they appear to be doing better than most because they have embraced diversity.
walk into the development team room at the county ground a decade ago and it would have been a white, middle-aged, middle-class man making the decisions. Someone with no understanding of what a young, British Asian or black child would face. No idea of the barriers in front of them.
This is a county rich in number when it comes to British Asians and I have experienced things first hand a couple of generations ago.
I grew up in a cricket school in Ilford that had a diverse feel — children from Indian, Pakistani, Caribbean and white backgrounds. It was great fun.
Yet, at Chelmsford’s county ground there was a general distrust, a feeling of ‘they don’t get us and we don’t get them’. even when the first XI had a middle order of Nadeem Shahid, me and Salim Malik. Growing up, I used to hear the phrase: ‘They don’t buy into what we’re doing.’
But it wasn’t like that, we were just from two different worlds.
My mum and dad were constantly asked about the Tebbit test — a perceived lack of loyalty to the england cricket team from Caribbean and Asian immigrants — but I would hope, 30 years on, people feel a natural connection.
I recall having a net at old Trafford, and some second generation Pakistani lads were giving me stick, telling me: ‘waqar and wasim are going to get you.’
My wish was for those lads who were like me to support and aspire to play for england.
I would have small amounts of racism hurled at me from both sides — being called ‘Paki’ on one side and ‘traitor’ by Indian fans on the other. But it was small stuff. It never held me back. These days, that development room at essex is diverse in many ways, comprising women, varying races and religions and those with a disability.
From what I see through the cricket school at Ilford, club cricket through my kids and school cricket through coaching, I would say there is about 35-40 per cent British Asian participation in english recreational cricket.
So how do you get them going through the system? Through the ranks you will see many British Asians at county and district trials but as you move into academy cricket, those numbers fall.
The answer is to encourage inclusivity. whereas in the past, Asian leagues would have been frowned upon by the essex hierarchy, now they are being brought on board and recognised for the contributions they can make.
Arfan Akram, the east London cricket co-ordinator for essex, is educating people in both directions. He gets where the clubs are coming from and where Asian families are coming from too.
For example, things like diet. I don’t want to get too stereotypical but this year, ravi Bopara tweeted a picture of the essex youth team
he played in and wrote ‘look how fat I was’ with a doughnut emoji.
In recent years, Arfan has used Ravi and Varun Chopra as role models to educate kids from different backgrounds on things they need to concentrate on — including diet.
I have always championed the effects of having Adil Rashid and Moeen Ali in the England squad, and seeing Moeen captain the side recently has to be inspirational to young British Asians. It is much more powerful than seeing me in the same position because, to some in that community, I was a whitish public school boy.
A particularly damning indictment from Sportsmail’s research, and I don’t claim to know what is going on behind the scenes at these counties, is that between them Warwickshire and Yorkshire have one British Asian player: Rashid. Think of the size of the
Asian populations in Birmingham, the Black Country, Bradford and Leeds. Something must be going wrong within those systems.
Finances play a part. Lots of state schools have sold off their cricket fields so it is not played as much. Plus, exams are in the summer. If parents of a 15-year-old British Asian or black cricketer do not see a future in the county game they are unlikely to take a gamble.
Who could blame them for putting school first? I was lucky because I had parents who knew the importance of an education but wanted me to be a cricketer.
Perhaps it is also down to an unconscious bias. When it comes to a decision between two players, is it easier for a coach to choose a white, middle- class lad? It’s a question we need to keep asking.
But if greater diversity existed in coaches and administrators, it would reduce the need to pose it.