Cricket & Racism: a movement not a moment.
This week Sky Cricket’s coverage of last year’s England v West Indies series won a BAFTA. Fronted up by Michael Holding and Ebony Rainford Brent there was a focus on Black Lives Matter.
The moment passed but both presenters were rightly critical that it did. There is a lot of work to do in cricket to address institutional discrimination and sometimes actual racism. The ECB were no doubt looking at matters but not much has happened, although very recently two black Umpires were appointed.
That failure to really keep working away at matters came back to bite cricket at Lords last week when a series of historic racist and sexist tweets sent by debutant in the England v New Zealand Test Ollie Robinson were revealed. He duly apologised and was suspended.
Then further social media issues with others players came to light.
Certainly the players themselves need to address the matter but there is an institutional issue that is more important, The question of racism and discrimination in cricket is not something that is raised, a few boxes are ticked and matters move on.
It is a question of constant awareness and education, in short as that BAFTA Award underlined this is not just a moment.
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