In an extract from a new Fifpro report, the Juventus and Italy captain outlines five steps he is taking to fight discriminationThis summer, I had the honour of leading my national team to glory at the European Championship. It feels like a long journey for the Azzurri, and on the road to victory we were often tested. But we learnt from that adversity, and from our mistakes, and those challenges make success taste even sweeter.Today Italian football faces another challenge: the horrific racism experienced by black players, and players from different ethnic backgrounds in general, in this league. This season we have already seen so many incidents. I feel ashamed as an Italian that my teammates and fellow players have...
Anyone who loves cricket wants a game that is inclusive and welcoming to everyone, says the author of the ‘Fletcher report’It was impossible not to be moved by the emotion in Azeem Rafiq’s testimony at the digital, culture, media and sport select committee and also not to feel angry about what he endured during his career in cricket; not only as a professional, but also as an ambitious junior representing his local town club.As he reeled off recollections of being targeted with abusive language, having his faith ignored and ridiculed, and he and other Asian players homogenised and dehumanised as either “Kevin” or “Steve”, I found myself nodding along. Continue reading...
Azeem Rafiq’s testimony shows the importance of having these conversations in public rather than hidden behind closed doorsSo the sun is up on another good day to be white, straight and privileged in cricket in the UK. We’ve had an unbroken run of these stretching back, oh, let me lick my fingers and flick through the calendar, about 200 years now. This latest, the 73,049th by that count, is a little harder than some of the others, maybe some people are feeling a little sore as they settle in behind their desks, a little tender as they head into the changing room, gym or nets. But if experience tells you anything, it’s that they’ll all be comfortable again soon enough....
While Rafiq spoke with bravery and honesty about his pain, Tom Harrison offered only evasion and self-preservationIt seems that Yorkshire County Cricket Club were right about Azeem Rafiq all along. He really is a natural-born leader. Just not in the way they’d hoped.On Tuesday morning Rafiq sat for an hour and three quarters in the parliamentary committee room of the digital, culture, media and sport select committee. He spoke for most of that time, stopping occasionally to gather himself. In the process he delivered a devastating, fearlessly detailed description of institutional racism shared live and unedited with the British public. Continue reading...
The treatment of the former off-spinner shows how those with status bend the world to their whim without real consequencesIn 2016 Azeem Rafiq returned to Yorkshire, the club and the county where – as we now know – he had encountered racist abuse and ritual humiliation since he was a child. On Tuesday morning in parliament the Conservative MP Damian Green, who was sacked from the government in 2017 for lying about the discovery of pornography on his office computer in 2008, wanted to know why.Green was by no means the first person to pose this question. Since Rafiq first went public with his experiences last autumn he has been hounded on social media by members of the public demanding...