Matthew Engel: "English cricket clubs should take a look at themselves"

Matthew Engel believes cricketing apartheid has become accepted practice within the domestic game.

In his notes for the 136th edition of the book, Engel argues that English cricket should by now have made more use of the influx of post-war immigrants from the Commonwealth - particularly India, Pakistan and the West Indies.

While he stops short of damning the sport for active racial discrimination, Engel says a subliminal division exists in clubs at all levels of the game.

He points to two counties - Yorkshire and Essex - where he says the problem is particularly pronounced.

But the sport's governing body, the England and Wales Cricket Board, denied there was any evidence of systematic discrimination and insisted the sport was being promoted among all racial groups.

And Yorkshire hit back at Engel, describing his comments as "ill-informed".

'Passive discrimination'

In his foreword to the new Wisden, Engel writes: "In an informal, unspoken, very English way, cricketing apartheid has become an accepted practice in England.

"I know of nothing that constitutes active racial discrimination in English recreational cricket. But there is a great deal of what could be called passive discrimination, a refusal to go an extra inch and welcome outsiders into a club's often clannish atmosphere.

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"It has become normal for ethnic-minority players to gravitate towards their own clubs, and there is now clear-cut evidence of segregation operating, informally, in both Yorkshire and Essex."

Engel said one of the causes of the division between racial groups was a feeling among white players in many clubs that Asian players were "standoffish" because few of them drank.

"The effect is that black and Asian players are operating outside the official structure," he added.

"They have become second class in all kinds of little ways."

A moral issue

There is a danger, according to Engel, that this two-tier structure could harm the development of the national summer sport.

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The available resources are not being tapped to their full potential: "English cricket should now be reaping great benefit from the generation born here of parents who came to Britain in the great wave of post-war migration from the subcontinent and the Caribbean.

"The new fast bowler Alex Tudor (who made his England debut in Australia in the winter) ought to be the harbinger of a galaxy of stars.

"But most of his black contemporaries have already been seduced by football, and many inner-city kids regard cricket as `an Asian game'.

"This is a moral issue. But, for English cricket, it is also a question of self-interest."

Informed debate

But the ECB's director of corporate affairs, Richard Peel, denied English cricket was being affected by a deep-seated racist problem.

He said: "While we would never seek to be complacent about the dangers of racism and are committed to addressing the problem whenever it occurs, current evidence does not suggest that a `system' of discrimination operates within the game.

"We believe it is important that an informed debate takes place about such an important issue as this.

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"We are committed to carrying out more research into this area and are keen to promote cricket as a sport that crosses all classes, creed and colours."

And Yorkshire chief executive Chris Hassell disputed the allegations.

"We have taken positive steps to address the situation but a fair bit of these comments are ill-informed," he said.

"I don't think there is anything specific about ethnic groups gravitating together in Yorkshire. It happens everywhere. All different nationalities are as guilty of that as any other.