Until administrators in Australia are ready to accept that the entry barriers for South Asian cricketers are rooted in a sense of superiority and privilege, the newly-formed Multicultural Action Plan will have little meaning
Pakistani-born Australia player Usman Khawaja has had to deal with discrimination during his career. Pic/Getty Images
At a time when Usman Khawaja has been denied the right to display a message in support of human rights, presumably all humans, Cricket Australia have launched the Multicultural Action Plan (MAP), ostensibly to tap into the huge riches of the South Asian diaspora who consume cricket with ravenous appetites.
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For South Asia, you may as well say India because in all honesty, if it wasn’t for the Indian rupees (converted into dollars) that is at the heart of the motivations for MAP, we would still be getting cheap laughs generated by Billy Birmingham (12th Man) and Greg Ritchie (Mahatma Coat). Let’s not kid ourselves that this has nothing to do with money – India has never been sexier and Cricket Australia are smart enough to want their share of the paratha.
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Kudos, Dr Misra
Much of the hard data that underpins the tenets of the MAP can be credited to people like Dr Ashutosh Misra, a cricket-savvy academic in Brisbane who has harnessed his passion for the game alongside a steely-eyed pragmatism that refuses to be seduced by cheap throw-away lines. Whilst he may not have got the credit he was due for his pioneering work in the sector, if the MAP is going to go beyond a press conference and a photo opportunity, it will need to lean on the wisdom of people like him who truly understand that words like Inclusion and Diversity alone won’t fix decades of structural inequity. In other words, put plainly, straight out racism!
There. I’ve said it. The elephant in the room. Until we are prepared to accept that the barriers to entry for South Asian cricketers, even today, are rooted in a deep-rooted sense of superiority and privilege, any of the fancy words in the MAP will fall on deaf ears. It will take more than an action plan to convince the thousands of cricketers who consume cricket outside the traditional structures of cricket boards and associations that Australian cricket is truly welcoming of them, even when there is no exchange of money. Otherwise, the suspicion remains that it is the clicking of the turnstiles and tv remote controls that motivate this sudden desire to embrace brethren who barely two decades ago had chicken bones thrown at them and were called “coolies” by drunken louts when Saurav Ganguly had the temerity to stand tall at the Gabba in 2004. I was one of those assaulted by bones and words that day. Despite complaints, the authorities ignored such commonplace behaviours, perhaps because they hadn't yet realised that the trail of naan bread crumbs would lead all the way to the bank.
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It will need the intellect of people like Dr Misra to inform policymakers at the grassroots on what inclusion really looks like from inside the Asian tent. And it will need courage from the policymakers at Board level (thus far comprising just two per cent of South Asians) to act on (sometimes) unconscious policies that could easily be otherwise dismissed as statistics unless you allow for self-fulfilling prophecies. The number of South Asian cricketers who self-exit from the Grade/District cricket pathways has to be viewed against the backdrop of why they felt there was no point in remaining in a system that was heavily stacked against them. It is not enough to simply look at the statistics at the end of the production line and then argue that the South Asians prefer their own leagues. For many who make this choice, it is precisely because their own leagues allow them to express themselves in their own voices rather than apologising (or having to make self-effacing jokes) for being themselves.
The MAP should ensure that relationship with the multicultural community is not transactional, but builds long term bonds with the community for lasting results. It is important to recognise that productive engagement with the community cannot be achieved overnight, and is incumbent upon trust and understanding that has been built over a long period of time by officers in-charge of the project. It is therefore essential to have continuity in those roles and not have a revolving door policy.
The good news is that things are changing and they are changing for the better, most of it coming from an authentic place. My First Grade debut in the late 1980s in Brisbane was an outlier – if not for sheer bloody-mindedness, I could easily have drifted away from the game had I allowed the cheap humour (always at my expense) to limit my ambitions to play first-class cricket. I was probably not even good enough to have played professional cricket, but England was a decade or so ahead of Australia in evolutionary terms so a lad with Sri Lankan roots was allowed to indulge futile dreams there. That same club today (Valleys CC) is home to Khawaja, its patron is Allan Border and its alumni boasts Matt Hayden, Stuart Law and Kepler Wessels to name but a few. In the last few years, all three of my teenage children debuted in First Grade before they turned 18. That would have been unthinkable back in my era but with progressive minds, anything is possible, even without a MAP. It just needs decent humans who see cricketers rather than cricketers of mixed ethinicity. In other words, they see Australians.
And if this MAP is to work, it requires a two-way street. I have seen too many South Asian families who have steadfastly refused to accept that this is Australia which is also entitled to hold dear their own traditions and cricketing culture which has enriched the game beyond measure. Australia, within reason, should be allowed to grow cricket in its own unique way, celebrating so many wonderful traditions and pathways that gave us Bradman and Border and the Healys (male and female). This rich legacy should be celebrated and made available to anyone prepared to meet Australian cricket half-way. It is a fallacy to expect all the concessions to be made by one party – I have witnessed a certain arrogance by some who believe that the power of the BCCI should cross international borders. Treat others as you would hope to be treated might be a good axiom upon which to build this MAP don't you think?
A Boxing Day Test in my household may provide us with a glimpse into how the MAP may have been visioned. Backyard cricket, classic catches in the pool, a breakfast of leftover ham and prawn curry and my Australian-born wife who routinely (futilely) questions if the TV has any channel other than cricket. Just as she teasingly pretends to change channels, a Pakistan fielder drops a sitter at first slip – the more things change, the more they stay the same!
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