Four men attended the Disney-themed party apparently with boot polish on their skin and dressed in green and gold to represent the Jamaican Olympic bobsleigh team who inspired the 1993 hit film Cool Runnings. A photograph taken on the night shows the men from Sileby Town Cricket Club smiling with the chair, Nigel Kinch, who is also chair of Leicestershire and Rutland cricket league, which is at the top level of competition for amateur club cricket.

“This guy is the figurehead of the league of 38 teams,” said Razaq. “I just wanted him to acknowledge that blackface is wrong and to apologise publicly so that younger players coming through wouldn’t be put off. It was his party at his cricket club and he should have sent those boys home in disgrace, not had his picture taken with them. Excuses are being made for actions that are inexcusable. What sort of example does it set? I tried to challenge it and they went after me.”

Azeem Rafiq, the former Yorkshire player whose testimony at a parliamentary select committee exposed institutional racism in the professional game, said he had been following Umar’s fight on social media. “Umar has been incredibly brave speaking out about his experiences. It’s increasingly clear that there needs to be investigations into the cultures of each county so as to get to the root of institutional racism in cricket. Again, we’re reading of a victim being abused and not heard. The game needs to change or we will lose a generation of aspiring cricketers.”

“So I shared the photo of the party [taken in 2014] which was still up on a Sileby player’s Facebook page. An apology would have ended it. Instead, I was reported to the police for harassment, though that came to nothing, and called in for a disciplinary for breaching social media guidelines. I couldn’t believe it. Another Sileby player called a woman who messaged to support me the c-word on social media. There is clearly a worrying culture at that club, and it’s even more worrying that the chair is responsible for the league.”

Attendee Paul Joy, the director of Northamptonshire Cricket Board, told the meeting that the issue was the limited demographic of people running leagues and committees who were usually aged 50-70-plus and resistant to change. According to the official minutes, Jarvis promised to force through change, set up an open forum to facilitate it and invited Razaq to be at its centre. However, four months later, Razaq says nothing has changed. “It was a box-ticking exercise. Still no apologies; Kinch still the chairman, [the member] still playing,” he said.

On the eve of the panel, Sileby posted a link to an apology on its website, entitled only “club statement” with no mention of the subject matter. It said the picture had been taken at a private function at the club where the fancy dress theme was Disney. It apologised to “any individual offended by the incidents … and any individual who feels they have experienced any form of discrimination from our club.” Razaq said: “That is a sorry if anyone was offended, not sorry, it was wrong. And nobody has bothered contacting me to apologise. The statement was not visible, it was not labelled, you had to click through to find it or you wouldn’t have known it existed. Mr Kinch has remained silent about his part.”

“I now feel ashamed and angry with myself for not taking a stand earlier,” he said. “It was all so normalised I didn’t even realise how bad it was. One black player joined us and left after one game because of the constant racist stereotyping of him being a gangster and a drug dealer. A Filipino player was nicknamed Yellow Man. Racism was like a disease at Sileby. It was just part of the culture.”

A spokesperson for the Equality and Human Rights Commission said: “There is no place for racism in sport, in the workplace or in any part of our society. We urge all sports clubs to examine what they are doing to tackle discrimination and harassment so that no one involved in sport, whether as an amateur or a professional, suffers the racism that others have sadly faced in the past.”

Many Asians have been made to feel so unwelcome in mainstream leagues and clubs that they have formed their own up and down the country. Tom Brown, who helped found the South Asian Cricket Academy after studying the many obstacles preventing British Asians progressing into the professional game, said: “South Asian leagues are usually framed as an example of ethnic minority players excluding themselves from ‘the system’, whereas a more analytical lens might point to their existence as evidence that the current system is not inclusive enough

“Recreational leagues are often ill-equipped to deal with complaints regarding such matters. Often, victims of discrimination find themselves with nobody to whom they can raise concerns other than those with a conflict of interest or in some cases even to those they are accusing.”

Source: The Guardian

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