“I think we have to be honest and we are starting to have those conversations now. Unless people in power connect with and understand and feel what it is like to be on the side of limited power, to not get access to opportunities, to know you are significantly less likely to be hired and significantly more likely to be stopped and searched, to be oppressed, we won’t progress,” said former England women’s cricketer Rainford-Brent, the director of Surrey Cricket, to start a special program on Sky Sports’ Pre-match analysis.
“What they saw [happen to George Floyd] was disgusting and people thought to themselves ‘enough is enough’. Everyone is recognising it, coming alive and seeing the difference in treatment of people. We are all human beings so I hope that people recognise that the Black Lives Matter movement is not trying to get black people above white people or above anyone else. It is all about equality.
“When people say ‘all lives matter’ or ‘white lives matter’, please, we black people know white lives matter. I don’t think you know that black lives matter. Don’t shout back at us that all lives matter. White lives matter, it is obvious, the evidence is clearly there. We want black lives to matter now. Simple as that,” Holding said in a Sky Sports Panel discussion, which has, since then, gone viral and rightfully so.
The statements had some uncomfortable realities too. For instance, Rainford-Brent, who was the first black female cricketer to have played for England women’s team, talked about the lack of empathy for her race in the whole fabric of the English system. Holding’s remarks brought the tyrannical structure to a grave low and forced the privileged people to rethink their own ideology and the treatment they dish out to the people of different colours. Could there have been a better start to a Test match we all had been waiting for with bated breath than this? None of the content had been edited out. Rather, it was promoted in all parts of the world even though some people were leaving unpleasant remarks in the comments section. Sky deserves all the credit for that.
England had their own history of making things difficult for Black cricketers – only recently Michael Carberry, Rainford-Brent, Tymal Mills, Roland Butcher, Donovan Miller, Michael Holding, Tino Best, Chesney Hughes talked about the injustice dished out to them and the lack of acceptance at a deeper level in the entirety of their careers in the UK. Now that the world is talking, it is understandable why England would want to be active on the subject and take a progressive step forward.
In the entire debate, however, it would be futile to expect the BCCI or the Indian public to have the same sort of reactions to racism because of their own ignorance. As the whole Darren Sammy saga brought this to the public, Indians’ understanding of colourism and racism is anything but decent and it will take a lot of education at all levels to make them aware of the fact that it is not always good to call the black cricketers with those derogatory nicknames. As Holding pointed out, it needs “education for the entire human race” and only then can we have a collective fight against the very notion.
What the Sky, with their July 8 strategy, achieved is a step forward to make the discussion on the subject mainstream even during a sports analysis programme. It showed that the pre-match shows can be used for a talk that brings a wholesome change to the society. Sky Sports has left it for the sub-continental boards to bring a complete overhaul of their strategy and use their hefty deals to dictate the course of how we and the next generation should view our sport as – a progressive one that was open for all or a sport that was afraid to take a stand. And we all know how difficult it will be to live with the second perception.