ICEC Report - prompt for change?

I have not read the Report but may read a Summary during the Lords Test.

Have been reading comments and articles in the Guardian and it seems the ICEC authors have delivered a devastating account on racism, class barriers and sexism in English cricket.

I daresay the ACB will read the Report closely, as will other National Boards.

I am curious whether others are following theReport, the reactions and what their own views are on it all.

All seems a bit “no shit Sherlock” really. Sport, and team sport in particular, is usually cliquey and unwelcoming to outsiders who don’t fit the mould, and I’m not surprised to hear that spills over into incidents of extreme discriminatory behaviour. We all know about the drinking culture and public school influence in cricket which marginalises certain groups. How we start to tackle it in a systematic way is anyone’s guess.

Just a few thoughts. (Skip over once it gets boring.)

I fear also, even aside from the public school networks & class-bound cliques (cf. the worst of the "Gentlemen" of old), there is, among those that were formerly called "the Players," esp. in the North-East, North-West, West Midlands, West Country and London - I've included a lot of the country there, haven't I? - a still-extant toxic element of a macho virility cult ...

Where to be different (sensitive, to have frailities nowadays more often sorted under mental health issues, and/or being gay, of colour etc etc - or even, heaven forfend, a woman) is to be at best laughing stock, at worst taboo, to be shunned.

If you're not right 'ard and don't strut your stuff with your jaw out, barking at others what the hell's wrong with you, mate, there's something wrong with you and you're out of place here in our circle.

Far from limited to England, though.


In case I'm challenged: Where do you get that idea from?

Well, for a start, Derek Bierley's "Social History of English Cricket" charts the rise of the "virility cult" esp in the 19th century, from the English public schools (see Tom Browne's Schoolboys, Newbolt's !Vitai Lampada"), through Lord Hawke and into the modern era.

The least pleasant side of Fred Trueman (for all his better sides) and Geoff Boycott, a boorish, too easily sneering approach to others who are depicted as not as hard and macho as yourself.

That is of course why Sir Geoff reacted like a firework to suggestions he'd been shit-scared of the West Indian quicks.

So too the worst sides of Hoggy and Vaughan - rather dubious tough guy poses struck, as if they had something to hide themselves (like: natural vulnerability, more supportive approaches to others, greater attempts at understanding what makes different people tick ...)

But Boer-ish and "ocker" attitudes (no doubt there are other descriptors in the Caribbean, the Subcontinent, elesewhere) are not that much different - and a strange sort of don't-show-anything-that-may-be-mocked-as-weakness "clubbishness" is probably an age-old and worldwide phenomenon.

Which doesn't make such attitudes natural, or conducive to seeking & getting the best out of people, their qualities, talents and potential - or even, out of yourself.

I'm certainly not saying the better alternative is "softness" or namby-pamby degeneration into a floundering pathetic chaos.

That (precisely) is the narrative of any macho virility cult - and from the psychological viewpoint, the fear/phobia that sustains it.

Yeah, we see it in both the upper classes and working classes, toffs and chavs if you like… and in between as well, though it’s perhaps most pronounced at the extreme ends of society? And things like team sports do amplify it, as well as attracting those who naturally lean towards that kind of behaviour… I imagine so many team dressing rooms, professional and amateur, are pretty toxic places.

Lord Gammon rubbishes the racism report and follows it with an “I’m not racist, I’ve got lots of (in his case very famous) black friends”…

So in the end Yorkshire fined £400k on four charges 300k suspended, plus loss of points. Coach Gibson bemoaning punishing a now clean regime for the racist sins of past regimes.

Points loss and average form will keep the Yorkers in Div 2.

Should have been relegated to Minor Counties for a year or two.

It’s crazy that some of the points were taken from a T20 competition that has already finished, and they didn’t get out of the group anyway. Why not next year’s?