Lancashire and Warwickshire look most likely to fight for the title, with Jimmy Anderson’s availability potentially decisive, while Hampshire benefit from a bolstered batting lineup Continue reading...
Introduction of a 10-team first division and an eight-team second tier is the start of a blueprint to improve English cricketCounty cricket is no stranger to rumours of its imminent reorganisation. There lives in every top honcho a desire to tinker with the settings, like a 1970s teenager idly flicking from dreary western to Songs of Praise on a Sunday afternoon.Sometimes these changes are genuinely huge – the switch to two divisions in 2000, the expansion from nine counties to 14 in 1895, the admission of Durham in 1992, the switch to four-day cricket in 1993; sometimes less so, like the move to 10 teams in the first division, eight in the second, which comes into place on Thursday with...
Every day of silence on Azeem Rafiq’s experience was a missed chance to tackle a problem that has blighted English cricketOn Saturday morning the BBC broadcast an interview with the former England captain Michael Vaughan about accusations of racism, that he has repeatedly denied, made against him by his former teammate Azeem Rafiq. If it was a deeply uncomfortable experience for Vaughan, who has been dropped from the Test Match Special team covering the forthcoming Ashes, then he was at least optimistic. “How we move on from this situation is the key,” Vaughan argued with regards to the Yorkshire scandal exposed by Rafiq. “I firmly believe that it’s education, honest conversations, people admitting that things may have been said and...
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....