Cricket has been dragged into the culture wars by an activist minority.
Racism has no place in cricket but an ‘independent’ panel is not impartial – and history has been ignored
No sensible person, and certainly no sensible cricket-lover, can believe racism has any place in cricket at any level. It should not have taken the England and Wales Cricket Board’s Independent Commission for Equity in Cricket, which reported on Tuesday, to work that out. And the remedy should be simple: that proven allegations should result in the instant dismissal of any player or official responsible for such behaviour. However, the commission is about far more than just that: equity covers gender [itself a subject in some jeopardy] and class, and the report wallows in them.
These are deeply political matters. In that context, the adjective in the commission’s title – independent – is interesting: independent of what? Of the ECB, certainly: but independence is not the same as impartiality. All five members of the commission have long records of progressive thought and activism. Any mildly conservative impulse among them that might take into account the more benign aspects of cricket’s history must be rare indeed. They represent a minority activist view and not majority opinion. The commission was chaired by Cindy Butts, who has a long record of anti-racist activism. She is also a veteran of the Metropolitan Police Authority, so had oversight of what is now depicted as one of the most disgraceful police forces in England. The ‘organisation and culture reforms’ on which she led, according to the commission’s website, clearly have yet to kick in.
She was assisted by Sir Brendan Barber, ex-General Secretary of the TUC; Michelle Moore, a ‘race equity’ expert; Zafar Ansari, the former Surrey and England cricketer who now practises as a barrister in a distinguished human rights set; and Michael Collins, a historian specialising in decolonisation and end of empire. That this group would fail to agree that cricket as we know it is a moral, social and cultural disaster was about as likely as Ben Stokes becoming pope.
The ECB set up the commission after the momentum created among activists by Black Lives Matter, a decision that was an overreaction and has led to some highly dubious conclusions and the proposal of an astonishing bureaucracy to police the game. The need to eliminate racism is beyond question, though the advocacy of ‘black-led cricket clubs’ seems at odds with a colour-blind game: but the report goes much further than that. As a result, the ECB has dragged cricket into the culture wars. If it thinks cricket will end up the better for it, it is much mistaken.
It points out that women professional cricketers are paid less than men. That might have something to do with commercial considerations – although women’s cricket has expanded its appeal in recent years it is nothing like that for men’s cricket. Men’s cricket will have to subsidise women’s if the pay gap is to be ended. An entirely separate women’s game, with its own governing body and finances, does not seem to be on the agenda. Why not? Because if it had to fund itself there would be even less money in women’s cricket than is now the case.
While the ECB is preparing to spend money on a diversity and inclusion executive, it is also told to consider class. This report has a profoundly Marxist taste because of its reference to ‘classist’ behaviour in cricket. At least it makes no secret of its own prejudices, by telling MCC (a private club) to cease hosting the Eton vs Harrow and Oxford vs Cambridge matches at Lord’s. MCC has been riven by arguments over this, and its members have made it quite clear how they feel – and the matches continue. Despite the veiled threat to award test matches on the basis of obedience to the new cultural norms, MCC should tell the Commission to get lost. It might also point out that the demographic of students that now dominates Oxbridge is remarkably similar to the one the Commission wants to create in cricket.
The commission complains that too few black youngsters play cricket; they hardly play it in the West Indies either, not because of incipient racism but because of the growing interest in American basketball; and the great West Indian teams of the 1970s and 1980s that inspired black people here are no more. People without the benefit of a private education dominate cricket not least because of the socialist policy, dating back to 1965, of abolishing grammar schools, the decline in club cricket (for a number of social factors unrelated to racism and classism) as a place for talented young players to cut their teeth, and the chronic refusal of teaching unions’ members to supervise games out of hours. It is all very well to tell the government to put more money into cricket in state schools: it won’t, and if it did it would be at the expense of funding for the NHS, or pensioners’ heating bills. What planet are the Commissioners on?
How credible is this report? It sought evidence, and the self-selecting group who responded numbered 4,156 people. It is on the basis of this tiny number that this report (branded ‘damning’ by the BBC, which seemed to love every second of it as it confirmed the Corporation’s view of the loathsomeness of white middle-class males) was compiled. It does call for further monitoring; and as in any responsible organisation, an assurance that people are not being insulted, bullied, discriminated against or treated other than according to their merits should be regarded as essential. But weaponizing cricket for use in the culture war (even to the extent of complaining about players drinking alcohol) and as part of a wider process of Marxist re-education, is not something the ECB can afford, for the sake of the game and for general sanity, to be sucked into.
‘Some of the information and language used in this report is potentially distressing’, the document begins. Too right it is. And it will be all the more so if the ECB take this nakedly political social engineering seriously, because it would threaten to undermine cricket fatally. DT.
