A crowded calendar is causing injuries and a player like Jos Buttler could miss matches because of his young familyCricket has become a sport that never stops, but though the Indian Premier League restarts this weekend and the bandwagon keeps rolling we have also reached the end of the British summer, as good a time as any to take stock and assess where we are and what the future holds.For England, there are some easy answers and some harder ones. In terms of cricket it has been a solid few months, with success in the short-form game balancing out some disappointment in the Tests. But the way the men’s international summer ended, with the abandonment of the fifth Test of...
The cricket authorities have failed the black community for years. They punish Ollie Robinson – but no one punishes themI think England cricketer Ollie Robinson should be punished for his racist tweets. Young man or not, he knew what he did. But the real problem is that he is a product of an environment created over the years by the cricket authorities, among other agencies.In 1948, there were 30,000-50,000 black people in Britain. There were British-born black rugby league players, rugby union players, footballers and boxers of repute, but not one black British cricketer of note. Why? If black people were here and they weren’t playing cricket there must have been something stopping them. Related: Lonsdale Skinner: 'Most of the...
The current furore risks obscuring how the ECB has made similar promises to tackle racism for a couple of decadesSince we are all looking backwards, let’s go a little further, beyond 2018, when Eoin Morgan sent a tweet saying “sir, you’re my favourite batsman”, spoofing comments he receives on social media from Indian cricket fans; beyond 2017, when Jos Buttler sent a similar one reading “much beauty batting you are on fire, sir”; beyond 2012, when Ollie Robinson “joked” “my new Muslim friend is the bomb #wheeyyyyy”; beyond 2010, when Jimmy Anderson wrote one in which he said Stuart Broad’s new haircut made him look like “a 15yr old lesbian”; all the way back to 1999, when the England and...
The player’s place in the Test side has become temporarily untenable and the culture secretary Oliver Dowden is doing him no favours in making him a poster boy in culture warOne Test into the summer and English cricket already finds itself under siege. Were it simply criticism of the national team’s lack of ambition with the bat on the final day at Lord’s, it could at least be blocked out like Dom Sibley shovelling one off his pads.The far trickier delivery faced right now is the fallout from Ollie Robinson’s unacceptable past postings on Twitter, with the England and Wales Cricket Board on Sunday evening announcing his suspension from international duty pending the outcome of a disciplinary investigation. Related: Dom...
There is unprecedented visibility now but the sport misses the female leaders pushed away when the ECB took over in 1998Almost three decades ago, on 1 August 1993, a 17-year-old Claire Taylor made her way through the Grace Gates for the first time. That day, she watched an England team led by Karen Smithies defeat New Zealand by 67 runs in the Women’s World Cup final. The players wore skirts, they were all amateurs who had to take time off work to compete, and the idea of prize money was unthinkable.Last week Taylor was back at Lord’s, now a proud MCC member, the chair of the MCC cricket committee, and with two World Cup winner’s medals in her trophy cabinet....