*Official* Yorkshire CCC racism crisis thread

[Burgey]

"too many of you lot" nicely sums up what brexit was all about.

Yep. Corrin has questions to answer.

 

[HeathDavisSpeed]

Just coming in here to make some notes based on my experience.

Firstly, peer pressure is a massive thing where you have senior people expressing objectionable opinions in a dressing room. I have sympathy for those younger players who didn't stick their hands up to say this behaviour isn't good enough. Voicing a different opinion would be likely to have them ostracised as well. Even as a more experienced player in my teams over the years, it's been hard to call out some of the homophobic and racially-tinged abuse that I've heard. I've done that, but have definitely felt like persona non grata for doing so at times.

Secondly, CricketWeb has been all to guilty of these same behaviours. Blocky's opinions about Ross Taylor utilised a standard anti-Pasifika stereotype that I had witnessed first hand used in cricket dressing rooms in New Zealand to bully Pasifika (and Maori) players. Is it any surprise that these communities are massively under-represented in cricket in New Zealand? Some of CW couldn't have cared less about that perspective and he was able to continue posting that trope (i.e. bull****) for months.

It's just disgraceful that these young (and even experienced) cricketers haven't been given a safe space to develop in the County Cricket environment. I'm sure there's a decent link again between these experiences and the under-representation of Afro-Caribbean and Sub-continental Asian cricketers in the England team. The ECB need to be taking more of a lead here - it's clear that this is endemic across the County game, and it isn't enough that Yorkshire set up a whistleblower hotline. That's just paltry and pathetic. Cricket is a game that's pretty damn hard on your mental health as it is, with peaks and troughs in form putting your position at risk. To then have additional mental pressure piled on through ignorance and bigotry is completely unacceptable.

Anyway, that's my tuppence from my suitably high-horse posted. It does my head in that we're in 2021 and people are still getting treated like this, but as society we tend to be going backwards at a fair rate of knots, so maybe I shouldn't be so surprised. Sigh.

 

[Burgey]

Rafiq has been asked about England men's Test captain Joe Root's comments that he cannot recall witnessing racism at Yorkshire.

"Rooty is a good man. He has never engaged in racist language. I found it hurtful because Rooty was Gary Ballance's housemate". Rafiq says Root was on nights out when racist language directed at his Pakistan heritage was used.

"Maybe he didn't remember it, but it just shows the institution that a good man like him can not remember those things."

"I told you! I told you!"

 

[Furball]

It's such a throwback kind of attitude though. I mean, when my grandfather founded a sports club in the 50s in midst of a huge wave of post-war immigration, they had a stack of Eastern European immigrants come and play soccer, and it was just the done thing to Anglicize their names.

They had a Polish bloke who played in goals with a name as long as your arm, and when he's rocked up even he said "Call me George", so of course his name thereafter wasn't his actual name, or even George, it was "Call Me George."

But you'd think by the 2000s that sort of lazy attitude would have gone by the wayside, wouldn't you? It isn't even as though Pujara's name is hard to pronounce ffs.

Tbat's reminded me that my old flatmate's family name is Brown because his Lithuanian great-grandfather was given the name by his pit boss when he arrived in the country to work as his Lithuanian name 'wasn't pronounceable.'

 

[flibbertyjibber]

I have skim readed the report that was linked to earlier.

Balllance, Bresnan and Gale should not be employed by any County team ever again. Scum.

Amazingly they gave Ballance a new contract a few weeks ago. Shows they don't care and don't feel any remorse.

 

[Burgey]

Despite all of Morgan's talk around not trusting Hale's, stokes was let back into the team for similar ****

Yeah but Stokes is the best all rounder in the world who brings something no one else can to the team. Hales is one of a dozen available top order sloggers who can do the same thing as one another. Make no mistake, there are always different rules for gun players to others. Hence why Root is still England captain (at least for now).

 

[flibbertyjibber]

Ballance comes across worse than Hales somehow

Maybe a reason why both were dropped by England and not picked again.

 

[Burgey]

I really can't comprehend Bumble's dressing room comment. It depresses me as much as anything that's been revealed

He's a flog. He's always been a flog. He lacks intelligence and is really only funny in that ****house Barmy Army kind of way where you make fun of other people's personal shortcomings. FMD the **** has made a career out of getting hit in the balls. Says a fair bit about what else he has to offer.

Still awaiting the England fans on here to acknowledge how woeful, cringeworthy and offensive their supporter group is tbh. They're as woeful as any other doing the rounds.

 

[Burgey]

When is Joe Root resigning as England captain?

 

[Gnske]

"I told you! I told you!"

View attachment 29861

It's like the Nazis at Nuremburg insisting they heard and saw nothing.

I'm not saying Joe Root is a Nazi mind you. But has he read Mein Kampf? Yet to see a denial.

 

[Chewie]

My username comes from people at intermediate school mispronouncing my last name / not bothering to listen to me explain how to pronounce it (it's not difficult) and just calling me Chewie instead. My parents really didn't like it and I managed to push back on it such that by the time I got to high school, only a small handful of people called me it in person, but I have since reclaimed it as my own online persona.

 

[flibbertyjibber]

There was an Indian lad at my school and his nickname was Stan which even back then I found disgusting. I never called it him and always used his name, I think I was one of a handful that never racially abused him by calling him Stan. Poor lad.

 

[Aritro]

I lived with an Indian girl called Kadambaree, who was introduced to us as "Kaz" by her white boyfriend, who couldn't pronounce her name.

So I called her that too. I was part of the problem.

It was systemic.

 

[Line and Length]

"Still awaiting the England fans on here to acknowledge how woeful, cringeworthy and offensive their supporter group is tbh. They're as woeful as any other doing the rounds."

This is typical @Burgey. Attempting to claim the moral high ground while his comments, past and present, have bordered on anti-India, anti-England racism.
Don't get me started on supporter groups. I vividly remember the mass chanting of "Kill! Kill!" as Jeff Thomson ran in to bowl at the WACA. The very same Thomson is supposed to have said he loves blood on the pitch. Compare this behaviour to the crowd reaction when John Snow felled Terry Jenner when the latter ducked into a short ball.

 

[Line and Length]

Just coming in here to make some notes based on my experience.

Firstly, peer pressure is a massive thing where you have senior people expressing objectionable opinions in a dressing room. I have sympathy for those younger players who didn't stick their hands up to say this behaviour isn't good enough. Voicing a different opinion would be likely to have them ostracised as well. Even as a more experienced player in my teams over the years, it's been hard to call out some of the homophobic and racially-tinged abuse that I've heard. I've done that, but have definitely felt like persona non grata for doing so at times.

Secondly, CricketWeb has been all to guilty of these same behaviours. Blocky's opinions about Ross Taylor utilised a standard anti-Pasifika stereotype that I had witnessed first hand used in cricket dressing rooms in New Zealand to bully Pasifika (and Maori) players. Is it any surprise that these communities are massively under-represented in cricket in New Zealand? Some of CW couldn't have cared less about that perspective and he was able to continue posting that trope (i.e. bull****) for months.

It's just disgraceful that these young (and even experienced) cricketers haven't been given a safe space to develop in the County Cricket environment. I'm sure there's a decent link again between these experiences and the under-representation of Afro-Caribbean and Sub-continental Asian cricketers in the England team. The ECB need to be taking more of a lead here - it's clear that this is endemic across the County game, and it isn't enough that Yorkshire set up a whistleblower hotline. That's just paltry and pathetic. Cricket is a game that's pretty damn hard on your mental health as it is, with peaks and troughs in form putting your position at risk. To then have additional mental pressure piled on through ignorance and bigotry is completely unacceptable.

Anyway, that's my tuppence from my suitably high-horse posted. It does my head in that we're in 2021 and people are still getting treated like this, but as society we tend to be going backwards at a fair rate of knots, so maybe I shouldn't be so surprised. Sigh.

I enjoyed reading of your experience and views.
I experienced something similar in a country town in WA in the '60s. I had joined the local football club (AFL) and, on the first night after training, the President called a meeting in the rooms. He indicated that "Some of the boys from the reserve want to join". The 'boys from the reserve' were the indigenous players who, apparently in the past, had to travel to another town for a game. He asked us to raise our hands if we approved of them playing. It was my first year of teaching in the town and I, along with another first year teacher and a new bank employee, raised my hand. We were the only raised hands in a group of about 40 players.

 

[Gnske]

Line and Length has a point. Burgey made a comment about a Polish player then the next sentence used the word "lazy" to describe what he was called.

He's the real enemy.

 

[RossTaylorsBox]

as society we tend to be going backwards at a fair rate of knots, so maybe I shouldn't be so surprised. Sigh.

I disagree with this in terms of this particular thing, the fact that people are up in arms about this and there's going to be consequences means something at least. Chewie talked about how racism stops when you push back on it and that was rarer when I was in school than now. People moan about wokeness or whatever but one side effect is normalising the calling out of casual racism which is only a good thing.

 

[HeathDavisSpeed]

I disagree with this in terms of this particular thing, the fact that people are up in arms about this and there's going to be consequences means something at least. Chewie talked about how racism stops when you push back on it and that was rarer when I was in school than now. People moan about wokeness or whatever but one side effect is normalising the calling out of casual racism which is only a good thing.

Totally disagree with you. I think racism and lack of understanding for different viewpoints has got worse, just that some people have got a bit more careful about where, when and how they express it. Speaking to friends/relatives in the UK over the last 5 years and some of the things that I've heard them say about EU citizens... well, it's shocked me that they thought I'd sit back and let them say such things. It's embedded and it's insidious and it's just that people are going to be much more careful about waiting for a sympathetic ear to talk to, which only reinforces these viewpoints still further. All reasonable people need to be aware that this is happening and the calling out of this behaviour is a wafer-thin veneer providing scant comfort.

 

[Burgey]

Speaking to friends/relatives in the UK over the last 5 years and some of the things that I've heard them say about EU citizens... well, it's shocked me that they thought I'd sit back and let them say such things. It's embedded and it's insidious and it's just that people are going to be much more careful about waiting for a sympathetic ear to talk to, which only reinforces these viewpoints still further

I'm not even so sure about that tbh, from an Australian POV anyway. There are people who seem happy to say the quiet part out loud more than they did 10 or so years ago even. The Hansons etc have been around for ages, but Trump and Brexit have legitimized this **** beyond where it has been before imo.

 

[HeathDavisSpeed]

I'm not even so sure about that tbh, from an Australian POV anyway. There are people who seem happy to say the quiet part out loud more than they did 10 or so years ago even. The Hansons etc have been around for ages, but Trump and Brexit have legitimized this **** beyond where it has been before imo.

Sadly, I suspect this is also true. I had some random that I came across who felt perfectly happy to tell me that he thought the government was racist because they were putting extra money into getting Maori communities vaccinated and what had those fellas done to deserve special benefits and additional treatment. He didn't like the fact that I called out the inequitable health system, education, the fact that the local iwi were running the vaccination centre for all of us etc. He felt perfectly comfortable voicing a racist view to someone he doesn't know.