https://www.sportindustry.biz/news/chris-grant-obe-publishes-open-letter

Painful, lengthy but certainly not TLDR – essential reading in fact if you want to grapple with the deepness and complexity of the problems.

Thanks for that link, Ged.

The degree to which racism has been overt or covert seems to have waxed and waned at Yorkshire depending on who was in charge. Rafeeq seems to say that the explicit comments receded while Jason Gillespie was in charge.

You might say that doesn’t make much difference; that obviously people were still thinking the same things, as evidenced by the way things immediately changed once Gillespie left. But Rafeeq also made the point that most of those he says were responsible for what basically amounted to racial bullying – Andrew Gale, Gary Ballance and Tim Bresnan – had learned their dressing room behaviours from the Yorkshire players who preceded them.

Rafeeq too is a product of that culture, which is at least partly how he’s found himself making his own apology this week.

The overt racism (and underlying covert racism) exposed at Yorkshire is, of course, disgusting. While I am not naïve or blinkered enough to believe that Yorkshire is the only county where such disgusting stuff has happened, I do believe it to be by far the the worst offender. Probably the only first class county where racism remained embedded and systemic until recently/now.

The issues around why the first class county squads do not reflect the demographics of the nation’s enthusiasm for cricket are themselves diverse and complex. Racism forms its part, but I think (in most counties) only a limited part. The lack of facilities in state schools (only 7% of our youngsters are privately educated) is high on the list. The dearth of cricket on free-to-air TV is also part of it. I probably wouldn’t have found cricket myself had it not been for a scholarship to a posh school and cricket on the BBC.

A “bright young thing” named Harjot Sidhu has dedicated an entire blog/site to the topic of diversity, mostly in cricket – I was honoured to be one of his first few interviewees earlier this year: https://www.londonwritingguy.com/

I shall watch the Stephen Fry’s Cowdery Lecture this weekend – perhaps later today once I have finished my work. The Ridiculous Ashes is also on my list for much-needed light relief this weekend.

LOL, as the young people say

And now I hear Tim Paine has quit as Australia captain due to some old text messages?

That’s true also of the parks leagues I used to play in in Leicester and Birmingham. Very few mixed teams (although both the ones I played for were). I doubt much has changed.

And I don’t think Leics have done a great job of bringing through local Asian players, given the demographics of the city. Jigar Naik was the first Leicester born Asian to play for them and that was only back in 2006.

At least those teams were in the same league. Incredibly, that’s not always the case in Yorkshire.

The problem isn’t just confined to the county cricket club but continues down the levels. In the league I played in there were white teams and teams of Asian origin. There were no mixed teams. Unless teams in the leagues do something I don’t see anything changing any time soon.