One of the weirdest things about racism, be it in person, on social media or emailed directly to a TV critic who dared to say a Cleopatra docudrama was fine, is that it so often comes with a caveat. First you get the bigotry, then a quick explanation that racism doesn’t exist anyhow. While a troll may spend their time trying to make people of colour hate themselves, they frequently claim that their use of racial slurs is born from the pure heart of a person who lives in a post-racial utopia. But unless viewers watch Channel 4’s Is Cricket Racist? with their eyes closed (broadcast as it is a few weeks after the Independent Commission for Equity in Cricket’s report found “widespread and deep-rooted” racism), there is no denying that racism exists in the sport. So much so, that the answer to the question in the documentary’s title can only be: “Very.”
This programme sees the actor and presenter Adil Ray investigate a troubled time for cricket after the Yorkshire cricketer Azeem Rafiq spoke publicly about the racism he endured at the county cricket club. Ray covers the fallout, his personal experiences as a fan and the historic institutional biases in the sport. But even in light of the recent report and media coverage, the documentary is genuinely shocking.
At its halfway point, Kamlesh Patel reads out a letter sent to him after he was appointed chair of Yorkshire County Cricket Club: “I’ve been reading in the press about all the ballyhoo of a Paki alleging whatever he did when he played for Yorkshire 10 years ago. Now someone has put this guy surnamed Patel in charge to sort things out, another coon. No offence, but it’s in the Oxford dictionary. It’s all so ridiculous, all out of proportion.”
As appalling as it is to watch him read it aloud, it encapsulates how dire things are, and there is an added layer of awfulness where abuse comes with the disclaimer that you are being ridiculous if you make it into a big deal. Rafiq’s brief appearance in the documentary, where he testifies before the Department for Culture, Media and Sport committee in 2022, also leads to its most shocking twist. Thirteen months after first making the allegations in front of the committee, Rafiq says: “All that’s changed really is my family have been driven out of the country.” Incredibly, Lord Patel, who was hired to help Yorkshire recover from the scandal, faced so much abuse that it contributed to him leaving the UK, too.
The programme documents a staggering level of institutional racism. While the focus is largely on players of south Asian descent, the journalist George Dobell, one of the first to look into Rafiq, explains how others have been targeted: “[The Black ex-Essex cricketer] Maurice Chambers had bananas thrown at him, told he was a monkey.” Though allegations of things said in private are hard to prove, particularly when clubs are quick to close ranks around their stars, Dobell claims that this is an ill-kept secret: “One of the players who used the N-word to him, he gets picked for England. Everyone knows.”
The openness with which racism seems to operate in contemporary cricket makes for fascinating, albeit deeply depressing, viewing. Imran Khan talks about how racism and Islamophobia “was very obvious, it wasn’t hidden” and came from fellow players, not just fans. This was ingrained in the explicit policies of his era that only players born in Yorkshire could play, creating all-white teams he calls “cricket apartheid”.
It is hard to come away from this documentary with much optimism for the sport. Patel’s replacement, the Paralympian Tanni Grey-Thompson, seems to have all the best intentions in the world when Ray meets her, but is still tied up in the same logic used in her predecessor’s letter, saying: “Do I think Yorkshire is racist? No, I don’t. There have been issues with racism.” She concedes some points and appreciates that moving forward requires “honesty”. But former players being hounded into self-imposed exile isn’t going to be fixed by getting rid of a few bad apples. The plan to give players “the ability to call it out” if/when racial slurs are used in the locker room is also profoundly irritating, having spent 40 minutes with a show proving just how dire the consequences can be when they do.
Ultimately, when the programme speaks to Rafiq, he is correct when he says he has been “vindicated”. He also states the obvious, that the onus cannot be on the players of colour to fix the system that has abused them. Even after all he has been through, Rafiq still has a level of disbelief that, in 2022, “an independent panel, a law firm actually wrote on paper that the P-word was used as banter”. Now, in 2023, enough is enough: between the report and this programme, the cricket world has to start being honest with itself. Yes, it is racist. No further caveat is required.
• Is Cricket Racist? is on Channel 4
