18 November 14, 2021The Sunday TimesCricket
Racism at Yorkshire is
nothing new – nor is
their reluctance to
do anything about it
Simon Wilde
The process of clearing out the old
guard at Yorkshire County Cricket
Club is well under way, but changing
the unacceptable mindsets of some
among the club’s wider constituency
may be less easy. One of the most
disturbing aspects of this epic story
of shame is the abuse emanating
from the terraces of Yorkshire
grounds towards non-white
opposition players and non-white
spectators — and the club’s wholesale
failure to do anything about it.
If the suspension of international
matches at Headingley is to be lifted,
the club is going to have to show they
can police spectators better than they
have done so far. That won’t be easy.
The report into allegations of
racism made by Azeem Rafiq was
unsparing on this: “The club’s actions
have been woefully inadequate in
protecting both spectators and
players from being subjected to racist
abuse by others... There appears to
be a very concerning and alarming
pattern of the club failing to take any
action, or taking inadequate action,
when such incidents are reported,
and failing to adopt... adequate
measures of prevention, control or
elimination of racist abuse.” It
referred to cases of alcohol beingthrown over Muslim spectators and
described the racial abuse of Muslim
spectators at Headingley as “prolific
and highly concerning”.
Unfortunately, it is not a
phenomenon confined to
Headingley. Three years ago, Ryan
Patel of Surrey reported a case of
racial abuse during a championship
match at Scarborough which was
passed to the ECB rather than
Yorkshire. The Scarborough club put
plain-clothes spotters into the crowd
but overall Surrey felt the matter was
dealt with unsatisfactorily. Whether
the miscreant faced consequences is
unclear, but doubtful.
Scarborough was also the place
where, in 1984, David Lawrence, a
20-year-old Gloucestershire fast
bowler playing his first full season of
county cricket, was subjected to a
litany of unrepeatable terms, and
had bananas thrown at him. He also
received a letter with a Yorkshire
postmark advising him bluntly not to
speak out.
David Bairstow, the Yorkshire
captain, apologised to Lawrence and
the rest of the Gloucestershire team
but the club itself did little or nothing
to prevent, control or eliminate.
This incident may have given at
least one Gloucestershire playerDavid Lawrence was
subjected to a litany
of unrepeatable
terms, and had
bananas thrown at
him at Scarborough
pause for thought because a year
earlier, during Lawrence’s first away
match, a team-mate left a banana skin
outside Lawrence’s hotel room.
Lawrence recounted this story
during a recent Sky Sports
documentary You Guys Are History,
and Gloucestershire have since met
with him and in a statement offered
him an unreserved apology. The
statement said Lawrence discussed
another historical incident “where he
was racially abused by the crowd at
an away fixture, but this was never
investigated by the club”. On another
occasion, Lawrence reflected: “I
don’t think I’ve ever played in a game
against Yorkshiremen where there
hasn’t been a touch of racism.”
The Lawrence incident at
Scarborough was soon well known
on the county circuit. When
Somerset played a NatWest Trophy
match at Headingley the next year,
and Viv Richards — at the time the
world’s greatest batsman — was
treated disgracefully by the crowd,
Ian Botham took the unusual step of
calling it out in a radio interview.
He called Richards’s abusers
“ignorant, biased, bigoted and a
bunch of racial idiots”, and pointed
out that the club had “previous” in
the shape of what happened to
Lawrence. He demanded Yorkshire
put their house in order, a call to
which Reg Kirk, Yorkshire’s
chairman, took exception until he
was reprimanded by his own
president, Viscount Mountgarret. Not
much changed: if anything, things got
worse at Headingley in the 1990s.
There was an unprovoked attack on a
West Indies fan who was defending
Richards from further abuse, and a
pig’s head thrown into a group of
Pakistan supporters during a Test in- Yorkshire received a report
about lewd and offensive remarks
about black and Jewish people.
A turning point, of sorts, was
reached with the 1996 Test involving
Pakistan, at which there were 11
arrests, including two for inciting
racial hatred. Chris Searle, who took
his young son and friend to the game,
gave a harrowing account of what he
saw to The Observer. When an Asian
youth was gratuitously attacked by a
white fan it quickly prompted chants
of “Stab the P**i”.
The BBC was criticised for air-
brushing the trouble from its
coverage but Lawrence Byford, the
Yorkshire president, had little choice
but to acknowledge the racist tenor
of the events. It was estimated that
Headingley was having more arrests
than all the other England venues put
together.
A club report came up with a
seven-point plan to prevent future
trouble but also noted — with the
straightest of faces — that five of the
91 letters of complaint it had received
thought the press had overreacted.
At least, 25 years on, the internal
investigations are facing up to reality
with a little more honesty.
‘You’re playing a professional sport, getting
very well paid. What other job allows you
to take your wife and family with you?’
home county should have sorted out.
You can’t tell me the Yorkshire com-
mittee were not aware of it. I’m cer-
tain they simply closed their eyes and
hoped it would go away.”
Is there a connection between that
historical tolerance of supporters’
racism and today’s troubles? “There is
a big difference between what some
idiot in the crowd shouts and what
happens inside the dressing room,”
Botham says. “You can’t legislate for
the idiot but you must go after them.
Inside the changing room there
is banter and there’s also a line
that you don’t cross. If you do
cross that line, you go into a
different world.
“I don’t know the ins and
outs of this story and so far,
we’ve only heard one side oftalking about the woe that has
befallen Yorkshire after their investi-
gation into complaints by Azeem
Rafiq that he was subjected to racist
abuse while at the club. Botham wrote
about racism inside cricket grounds in
his autobiography and highlighted a
racist comment made to his friend
and team-mate, Viv Richards, during
a Somerset match against Yorkshire at
Harrogate in 1975. A spectator called
Richards “a black bastard”.
In his book, Botham wrote: “I am
not saying all of the Headingley, Scar-
borough or Harrogate crowd are the
same, but there is a small element that
follows the county which is undoubt-
edly racist. When I was captain of
Somerset I was particularly aware of it
and felt that it was something the→Continued from page 17THE MATCH
The T20 World Cup final
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Australia arrived with a string
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Another is the control and
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Except when being
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New Zealand’s
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Tim Southee has
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out performer,
with Trent BoultSIMON WILDE’S
GUIDE TO TODAY’S
T20 WORLD FINAL
taking most wickets. The
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England fans will be backing
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Australia should be at full
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New Zealand will be
missing batsman-
keeper Devon
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finger punching his bat in
frustration after getting out