Cricket Elitism: Yes, Please!

I have a confession to make: I don’t care how elitist cricket is; I’m not bothered whether it’s sexist or racist either, particularly when such terms now distill to little more than ‘there are too many white men involved.’ Don’t get me wrong, I’m not suggesting we invite the KKK to field a team any time soon, I’m simply stating I do not require that reality conforms to quotas, and I’m deeply suspicious of anyone who does; suspicious that they may be selling something far less marketable than compassion.

So when English cricket was declared the latest bastion of ‘institutional racism,’ I found it hard to see this as anything other than a propaganda vehicle for the grievance industry—a justification to charge exorbitant fees for a purge, and an opportunity to keep the victimhood narrative afloat for another six months. After all, any sport worth its salt has already achieved the distinction of ‘institutional racism’: football scored an own-goal a decade ago, rugby converted a few years back, and even Scottish cricket has finally bowled a googly; if anything, English cricket is playing catch-up.

The 317-page dossier from the neutral-sounding Independent Commission for Equity in Cricket (ICEC) draws its evidence from an astonishing 4,000 players, coaches, administrators and fans, and sets out 44 recommendations. Before we get into that however, we need to bear a couple of things in mind which indicate just how necessary it was for cricket to be convicted: first, the protracted hounding of Michael Vaughan over accusations of racism (from which he was subsequently cleared), but which nonetheless resulted in his dismissal from commentary. Second, the report was commissioned at the height of the Black Lives Matter notoriety (which may explain the widespread use of critical race theory gobbledegook). And third, the authors’ spectacular over-reliance on increasingly meaningless, loaded terminology such as ‘institutionally racist,’ ‘baked in,’ and ‘deep-rooted,’ which indicate a distinct lack of dispassion.

More than any of this however, my lack of concern about elitism in cricket can be explained by my similar disregard for the gender pay-gap. If such discrimination were genuine, successful companies would be full to the rafters with cheap female labour, thereby saving a fortune and ticking that all-important diversity box. But of course, the gender pay-gap is not true. Moreover, while companies pay lip-service to diversity, what they really seek is competence—and like many such premium commodities, competence is not evenly-distributed. Nowhere is that more evident than elite sport.

The money involved keeps the selectors honest. Were any manager genuinely prejudiced against excellence (and assuming diversity is the harbour of such a product, as we are frequently told), they would be swiftly embarrassed by the marketplace. Sport embraced non-white athletes decades before racial prejudices begun to break down, for the obvious reason that winning is all-important. After all, the great Joe Louis fought Max Schmeling at the height of segregation—not because he was black, but in spite of it. Sport is the fairest pursuit of them all: a quest for distinction, which fundamentally demands both the selection of, and guarantees the victory to, the best players.

It is therefore the ideal arena in which to test the Sadiq Khan dictum “diversity is our strength,” a motto which would fail at every possible juncture. If you doubt that, feel free to manufacture a Bud Light, LGBTQwerty, quota-based sports team, and let us know how you get on.

No matter what clichés they employ, everyone instinctively knows the truth of this. Which is why no one bats an eyelid at the lack of diversity in the 100M line-up, the paucity of thin sumo wrestlers, or the fact that the French football team is comprised entirely of black men—men who got there on merit, not quotas. Deep down, we all know that equity (equality of outcome) is bilge—of course cricket isn’t a sport for everyone, which elite sport is?

There’s another reason I don’t care for this report: it was cobbled together with a clear agenda, an agenda revealed by its language. Allow me to give just a flavour of the reports ‘findings’:

Sexism 

Women are treated as ‘second-class,’ and are still perceived as an ‘add on’ to the men’s game; they receive a fraction of the pay of the men, and are under-represented at management level. All of which is undoubtedly true, but so what? While women certainly deserve equal pay for equal work, this is something they rarely (if ever) achieve in sport. I don’t say this because I’m a chauvinist (I am, but that’s immaterial here), but because the free market sets the value of female sportswomen far below that of the men, because women’s sport isn’t anywhere near as good, and therefore generates less income. There is a reason ‘trans men’ are not dominating male sports, and that is unlikely to change any time soon.

Elitism 

Cricket is apparently “elitist and exclusionary,” dominated by those fortunate enough to attend private schools and take advantage of “old boys’ networks,” with the game permeated by cliques “to the exclusion of many.” Again, I don’t doubt it for a moment. But in what industry is that not true? Have the authors of this report never seen the House of Commons, nor inspected the make up of its front benches?

Drinking

A “drinking and puerile lads’ culture” pervades the sport, thereby simultaneously putting women in the firing line of unwanted attention, and acting as a barrier to the inclusion of Muslim communities. I’m finding it hard to conceive of a sport in which this would not be the case. Even in the chess circles I used to frequent (and they are a racy crowd, let me assure you), exactly the same could be said of the post-match excesses which were a regular fixture.

“Type K“

But it is not until the report gets around to “Type K” (mentioned 19 times)—the dreaded scourge it deems responsible for all the game’s ills—you’ve guessed it, “white men, educated in private schools, who are straight and cisgender, and do not have a disability.” Naturally, as disgusting as these types are, they’d be so much more useful to society as a whole, and to the game of cricket, if they managed to turn up once in a while in a wheelchair.

This report is yet another thinly-veiled assault on the straight white man, in this case enjoying his well-earned Sunday game of cricket. By all means let us have a debate about how cricket (and sport in general) could be made more accessible to the general public. But if you’re calling time on cricket because the women are not as good as the men, because the game is dominated by white players in a white country, or because the batsmen enjoy a few sherbets after the game, I’m afraid you’re on a very sticky wicket indeed.

This piece first appeared in The European Conservative, and is reproduced by kind permission.

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