Following allegations of racism in Yorkshire County Cricket Club, those involved in Scottish cricket began to come forward with their own experiences of racism while playing the sport. This in turn has led to a review into whether Scottish cricket is institutionally racist, led by the diversity company Plan4Sport, the results of which were published last week.
The report defined institutional racism as “the collective failure of an organisation to provide an appropriate and professional service to people because of their colour, culture, or ethnic origin”. It used engagements from the cricketing community, existing complaints of racism and three surveys to analyse the extent of racism within Scottish cricket, and whether complaints were appropriately dealt with by Cricket Scotland.
The report found clear signs of institutional racism. To do this, the report studied 31 indicators of institutional racism, including transparency of decision-making, avoiding a culture of racially aggravating language, and listening and acting on the views of ethnically and culturally diverse communities. When measured on these metrics, Cricket Scotland failed to meet 29 of these indicators, and only partially met the remaining 2. More specifically, the views of participants in the study provided evidence of inappropriate language masked as ‘banter’, a poor system for reporting racism to leadership creating “no willingness” to deal with racist incidents, and a lack of transparency causing some people raising concerns to be victimised as a result. Overall, the report found it clear that there was institutional racism within Cricket Scotland, which had made those from ethnic minority communities feel unwelcome and limited how far they could rise through the association. This created a lack of diversity within leadership roles, exacerbating the problem of institutional racism.
The report concluded that Cricket Scotland should be placed into special measures by Sportscotland, and that given the resignation of the existing board, the new members should reflect both the gender and racial diversity of cricket in Scotland. In the long-term, the report suggested that Cricket Scotland should work to properly respond to complaints of racism, encourage diversity within all areas of the sport and create an inclusive environment both on and off the cricket field.
Scottish Conservative MSP Sandesh Gulhane commented on the report saying: “Revelations of institutional racism in Scottish cricket are profoundly distressing and disappointing. Racism should have no place in any sport or aspect of society”.
While the report’s recommendations have been suggested to end institutional racism in Scottish cricket, other challenges face improving diversity in the sport. Before the report was published, the entire Cricket Scotland board resigned, creating a vacuum at the top of the sport at a time when urgent reform is clearly needed. However, the report found a huge amount of enthusiasm towards Scottish cricket from those who engaged with the report. Testimony found that where teams were diverse and inclusive, participants held positive and hopeful views towards cricket. It will be upon the new board members to learn from the mistakes highlighted in the report and these success stories mentioned, to make the culture of Scottish cricket inclusive to diversity and intolerant of racism.