THE interim boss of Cricket Scotland has insisted he is “determined” to make the sport a welcoming place as he claimed an action plan for tackling institutional racism would be published this week.
Gordon Arthur, interim CEO, updated the Scottish Parliament’s Health, Social Care and Sport Committee on Tuesday on progress being made after an independent review commissioned by sportscotland found the governance and leadership of the sport to be institutionally racist.
But while Arthur – alongside sportscotland’s Chief Operating Officer Forbes Dunlop – insisted plans were being put in place to transform the inner workings of Cricket Scotland, MSPs were highly critical of the pace of change and exposed staffing issues during the meeting, including an apparent reluctance to recruit an HR manager.
It also emerged more people had come forward with complaints about racism within Cricket Scotland since the publication of the report.
Dunlop admitted sportscotland had not known the depth of failings within the sport prior to the review and changes would be made to ensure the organisation “gets underneath issues quicker”.
The July report, which Arthur described as “appalling”, highlighted 448 examples of racism within Cricket Scotland, with 68 individual concerns referred for further investigation.
The report made three immediate recommendations, including the appointment of a new Cricket Scotland board which must consist of 40% male, 40% female, with at least 25% from an ethnic minority.
The review was ordered after a number of allegations were made against Cricket Scotland and Western District Cricket Union (WDCU) last year, which included accusations of racist abuse suffered by Scottish cricketers Majid Haq and Qasim Sheikh.
The previous Cricket Scotland board resigned the day before publication of the Changing Boundaries report, and the sport’s governing body was put into special measures.
Arthur told MSPs: “The publication of this report was a very dark day for Scotland. The report laid bare a picture which is appalling. You cannot justify the scale of this and brush it off as being a reflection of things that go on in society more generally.
“We are determined to make cricket a welcoming place for all people in our sport.”
Action plan on its way
An action plan for tackling institutional racism was meant to be produced by the end of last month but has been delayed due to a lack of anti-racism expertise having been utilised prior to publication.
As MSPs demanded answers over the delays, Arthur said: “The action plan is out for consultation with Running out Racism [an organisation set up to tackle racism in the sport], it was first developed in the middle of August and has been a developing plan since then.
“I hope the action plan will be published this week.”
'No need for an HR manager'
MSP Sandesh Gulhane said he was “angry and upset” by what he had heard during the meeting and claimed Arthur and Dunlop were not taking the issue seriously enough.
He demanded to know why an HR manger had not been appointed – one of the recommendations of the review – and when this was going to happen, but Arthur revealed at the moment there were no plans to recruit one and they were prioritising getting a head of communications in place instead.
Arthur also revealed people were feeling reluctant to come and work for Cricket Scotland on the back of the worrying review.
Arthur said: “There were four roles that were recommended that we appoint in the report. One of those, the HR manager, is a role that we are not sure the organisation would ideally have in the long run. We are a very small organisation.
“We have other ways of accessing HR support, we are getting a lot of support from sportscotland from HR-related managers.
“We haven’t had a communications person since the start of this year when the person who left was not replaced. We’ve just been through a recruitment process to try and bring a new head of communications, we had a very good candidate but they were persuaded by their employer to stay where they are. We’re going to need to restart that.
“We are working in a recruitment environment where prospective candidates are worried about coming to work for Cricket Scotland because of what they have seen.”
Breaking down barriers
One of the biggest concerns coming out of the Changing Boundaries report was an apparent issue with players of a south-east Asian background not progressing from age-grade and club level through to the national team.
Arthur said he saw it as his job to understand if and why this was happening and ensure any barriers to participation are taken away.
He admitted there had been issues with transparency around squad selections in the past and efforts were being made to try and resolve this.
He also pledged to speak to people at grassroots level to gain a deeper understanding of the reasons why people do not progress from junior to senior ranks.
Arthur said: “There is a perception that people are not being given a fair opportunity to progress and I see it as my job to get behind that perception, to find out the reasons people are not coming through.
“I can’t imagine why people would want our team not to have the best 11 players every time it plays. The idea of excluding people because of their skin colour or because they live in a more remote part of the country, any reasons why people would be excluded need to be explored. We need to build a process that gives people as much opportunity as possible.
“There will be many reasons why people don’t progress from the junior ranks, but we need to understand what all those reasons are, we need to make sure barriers are removed if they are there.
“Cricket Scotland has not been transparent about many things. It’s just got on and done things, hasn’t explained to people how they have been done.
“Historically, selection meetings have taken place, teams have been picked, squads have been announced, but there’s been no information behind that at all. For the Men’s [T20] world cup squad, the men are out in Australia just now preparing for that, we put a lot of work in to try and put together and publish a very clear process as to how the squad was picked and who was involved in picking the squad.”
The committee said it planned to invite Arthur and Dunlop back before the start of the next cricket season to check up on progress.
