Michael Henderson
The Bouncer
Sion Touhig/geTTy imageAbove S
Children play
in the streets of
Manningham,
Bradford, in the
aftermath of the
2001 riots
Tolerance has to work both ways
John Westerby wrote a very good piece in
The Times last month about club cricket
in yorkshire, and more specifically club
cricket played by those from a Pakistani
background. Let’s describe it as it is.
‘asian’, in this context, is not an accurate
word. We are not talking about indians,
or Sri Lankans, or even Bangladeshis.
This is a British Pakistani problem.
The question Westerby raised on his trip
to Bradford was this: how can we attract
more cricketers from this background into
the game? There are plenty about, but very
few go on to play the game professionally,
or to mix with players from the indigenous
culture. adil Rashid, a Bradfordian, made
it into the yorkshire side, and then, briefly,
the Test team, and he is a pillar of the
one-day side. But few have followed him.
it is a serious problem, rooted in mutual
suspicion. There may be no race bar- this is not mississippi – but there are
misgivings on both sides because cricket
must, to some extent, reflect the society
in which it is played, and life in Bradford
is not always harmonious. That is not
an opinion expressed from the safety of
southern england. it is a matter of record.
Bradford is the city of JB Priestley
and David hockney. it is also the city
of naz Shah, the current mP, who was
suspended by the Labour Party two years
ago for sharing a graphic on Facebook
about israel that Jeremy Corbyn
considered “offensive and unacceptable”.
and if Corbyn found it offensive and
unacceptable, then it probably was.
We can go back to 1984 when Ray
honeyford, the headmaster of a Bradford
primary school, wrote an essay for the
Salisbury Review in which, drawing on a
lifetime of experience, he described the
separate development of schoolchildrenin places like Bradford (the city is by no
means unique), and how this rupture
could only harm the social cohesion of
what politicians like to call ‘the community’.
There was a kerfuffle, and honeyford
eventually resigned on health grounds,
having sustained the kind of concerted
assault on his reputation that befalls
anybody who questions the assumptionsof those who would rather not be
disturbed. By the time he died in 2012,
though, most reasonable people would
agree he was right to say what he did, for
the best of reasons. as a headmaster
he could see who really suffered at the
hands of the multicultural zealots.
Cricket has a good reputation for
bringing people together. all sports
like to claim theirs is the most active
in uniting young men and women in a
common purpose, but there isn’t one,
not in this country, that has done as
much as cricket. Because it was a game
of empire the children of that empire
who emigrated to the uK were familiar
with the language of cricket, to our
mutual advantage.
in yorkshire, though, the sense of unity
has been less evident than other parts
of the land. The common law of ‘born
and bred’ – relaxed in 1992 when Sachin
Tendulkar became the first overseas player
to wear the club colours – deepened that
sense of yorkshire exclusiveness, and there
were in years past well-documented
incidents of racial abuse at headingley.
one notable West indian opted to stay in
Lancashire whenever he played at Leeds.
The club have done their best to
encourage young British Pakistanis to
play the game – and the regeneration of
Bradford Park avenue is a positive step- but the suspicion remains mutual, to
the extent that many continue to play for
teams of their own. This may be a social
thing. Cricket is a very social game, in
which belonging to a club means more
than making runs and taking wickets.
it is about taking part in activities after
close of play. Drinking has always been
important, and we’re not talking about
halves of shandy.
many British Pakistanis feel
uncomfortable in that kind of
atmosphere. But that is no reason for
the hundreds of clubs in yorkshire,
or elsewhere, to bend with the wind.
Tolerance works both ways. if people
truly want to feel integrated they must
be prepared to meet ‘the other’ on terms
that are not always favourable. and this
remains a remarkably tolerant country.
The presence of so many people who
were not born here tends to prove it.
yet the question Westerby raises must
still be asked. and, with the best will in
the world, there are no easy answers.
Yorkshire have done their best
to encourage young British
Pakistanis, but many continue
to play for teams of their own.
Cricket is a very social game.
Belonging to a club means
more than runs and wickets
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