In the end, censorship won out. Usman Khawaja might have known that the words he scribbled on the sides of his boots would quickly garner critical attention from cricket’s power brokers. Not because the messages he sought to express during Australia’s first Test of the summer were overtly political. After all, what legitimate counter argument is there to the assertions that “all lives are equal” and “freedom is a human right”? What makes this outcome predictable is that the type of athlete activism attempted by Khawaja has never found a welcoming home in his sport.
It’s been 60 years since CLR James asked, “What do they know of cricket who only cricket know?” It was a prompt to fans and players to interrogate the game’s colonial legacy, to challenge existing racial inequities, and to recognise that forces beyond the boundary determined who had the privilege of scoring runs and taking wickets for their country. Six decades later, James’s question remains pertinent.
