Published: Sep 13, 2011, 10:54 AM (IST)
Edited: Sep 15, 2014, 05:08 PM (IST)
Nasser Hussain has been the only Asian player in the recent years to represented England, who had the ability to hold down a place over a period of time © Getty Images
By Rohan Kallicharan
I was somewhat taken aback to watch a segment of BBC’s Newsnight programme recently, one in which The Guardian’s Sarfraz Manzoor seemed to insinuate that English cricket was responsible for institutional racism, and that the number of Asians in the England side was not reflective of the nation’s multi-cultural society.
It is an interesting opinion, one that the writer is quite allowed to have, but one which I find wholly impossible to accept.
There was a time, not in the distant past either, where English cricket relied almost exclusively on the Public School and University system to provide its cricketers. Scyld Berry of the Sunday Telegraph recently argued that this has not changed, and that it was possible that the working class was being discriminated against as a whole, regardless of race.
He had facts with which he chose to justify his argument, stating that in the recent English team selected for The Oval Test, “Two of the team will have learned their cricket in South Africa, one in Ireland, and five at fee-paying schools in England. Only three will have come from state schools, which 93 per cent of our population attend.”
Having said that, this is the same Scyld Berry who recently said that Sachin Tendulkar rarely produced when his team needed it, so I reserve the right to be dubious of his opinions, regardless of his status as Editor of the publication that most cricket aficionados refer to as The Bible.
The simple fact is that the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) has worked particularly hard to develop the game at grass roots level, particularly within the clubs, as sport in general is dying a death within the English state schooling system.
I wonder how Berry’s proportional representation model would apply to the current squad representing England at the Rugby World Cup in New Zealand … I suspect that he would find a similar trend. Moreover, I do not recall recent heroes Andrew Flintoff and Michael Vaughan coming from anything other than a state-provided education.
Either way, at least Berry did speak with the eloquence and experience of an experienced and successful cricketing scribe, which is an accusation that you could certainly not aim at Manzoor with his claims of racial discrimination.
This is the same England for whom in recent years we have seen Nasser Hussain, Ravi Bopara, Monty Panesar, Ajmal Shahzad, Adil Rashid, Saj Mahmood, Vikram Solanki, Kabir Ali and Samit Patel. They have all had opportunities, and it is not the fault of the authorities that Hussain is the only one of them who had the ability to hold down a place over a period of time.
A more urgent question would be what has happened to Black players in English cricket? From an era in which the likes of Phil DeFreitas, Chris Lewis, Gladstone Small, Devon Malcolm, Dean Headley and Alex Tudor were just some of those that represented England, Michael Carberry is the only Black cricketer to have been selected in recent times.
It is a trend that repeats itself in the county game, with fewer and fewer Blacks representing their counties. However, this is an issue borne not so socio-politically as from the decline of West Indian cricket.
Whether we are from Asian, Black or English communities, whether we are in England, India or the West Indies, we all need role models, and our role models normally reflect our own backgrounds, because they give hope of what we can achieve.
Indians in India wanted to be Tendulkar, West Indians in the Caribbean wanted to be Brian Lara, Viv Richards or Malcolm Marshall. Indians in England now want to be Tendulkar while West Indians everywhere are without a serious role model to whom they can look up with the game in that region in seemingly terminal decline.
Where Viv Richards once represented everything that these Black youths aspired to, it is now Usain Bolt, Kobe Bryant and Didier Drogba who symbolise their utopia.
This is where Berry and Manzoor miss the point. Everywhere you go, whether in England, India or any part of the cricketing world, those with a financially healthier start in life are going to have an advantage. This does not need backing up with scientific or sociological debate, it is pure common sense.
Where English cricket needs to really clean up its act is with the constant flow of South African, and even Australian, players not only into the county system, but into the national side. I do not include Kevin Pietersen in this category, as his mother is English, so he has every right to play for England. He also laid down his preference at an early stage, not representing South Africa at Youth Level.
The simple matter is that the ECB and its selection panel will continue to pick what they deem to be the best side available to them, and they have shown that race and nationality is not part of their agenda. Furthermore, the rankings and recent results illustrate that they are doing a very successful job of doing so.
The likes of Berry and Manzoor are welcome to opinions, and what some may even describe as agendas in the case of the latter, but the job of the ECB is to produce a successful England side, which is exactly what they are doing. Sociological issues will always exist, but they are certainly not being exacerbated here by those around race.
(Rohan Kallicharan, son of the legendary batsman Alvin Kallicharran, is a West Indian cricket enthusiast based in the UK who played at under-19 level. He is now a Recruitment Professional who writes about the game in his free time. He is a columnist for All Out Cricket Magazine. He also has own sports’ blog hetoreahamstring.co.uk)
