Why is cricket still a white preserve?

If anyone asks you what you think of our national cricket team, reply with Gandhi’s famous words about Western civilisation: it would be a very good idea.

Fifteen years after this country re-entered world cricket after apartheid, its cricketers took the field against New Zealand the other day with precisely two black players out of 11. Later in the day, on the same field, England took the field against India — with three black players.

The South African team were selected from a 15-player squad, of which nine were white. All nine were selected; all four of the players who sat out were black. So this is not yet a national team — it is a white team, in which a couple of black players are grudgingly admitted.

Why is cricket still a white preserve? The cabal of white ex-players who dominate media coverage of the game — and whose commentaries play a big role in influencing selections — as well as most white cricket fans will tell you that the blacks aren’t good enough. The only reason there are so many black players in the squad, they will add, is that “political interference” forces the selection of weak black players.

This “explanation” begs some questions. First, black players are good enough to take up several places in the English team, despite the fact that black people are a minority in that country. So why are a much greater percentage of black players good enough in Britain but not up to it here? Is it the climate? Or the fact that their black players are judged by whether they really are good enough and ours are not?

Second, why are some white players given repeated chances to prove themselves while black players are not afforded the same privilege? The celebrated white player Jacques Kallis performed poorly when he became an international. He was given repeated chances because it was assumed that he was good enough and eventually he excelled. New black players are usually dropped after a couple of games if they do not make it immediately. The effect is often to destroy their confidence, ensuring that the claim that they are not good enough becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Third, why are some black players who are selected for national squads not allowed a chance to play? Repeatedly, selectors choose squads with several black players in them — it is not uncommon for the (white) captain and manager who select the teams that take the field to leave out some of these players for entire series — and you clearly can’t prove yourself if you don’t get a chance to play. (At the last World Cup, one black batsman was given a chance to play. But he did not get a turn to bat in the game — and was dropped for the next game! Since he was not allowed to do anything, it is unclear what he could have done wrong.)

Indeed, it is a now familiar pattern that those who are left out of any important game will be overwhelmingly or exclusively black. Excluding someone without giving them a chance has nothing to do with merit — it is simply an expression of prejudice.

Fourth, why are black players often relegated to minor roles, particularly at important phases of the game? It is common for black players to be forced to give up their chance to bat, or to bowl less than their white teammates, when the pressure is on. Again, this doesn’t mean they have failed — simply that they were nor given a chance.

The reality is not that black players are not good enough. It is that they are repeatedly relegated to the margins. There is probably no great conspiracy at work — the whites who take the decisions are simply used to assuming that whites are good at cricket and blacks are not, whatever the evidence may say.

This is, of course, not the only area of our national life in which this happens. In business and the professions, too, the fact that apartheid ensured that whites did the thinking and blacks did the heavy lifting have convinced decision-makers that blacks just aren’t up to the task of doing anything complicated. And it is precisely why we still need policies mandating black access to jobs and the skills required to do them — because, if we did not, the kinds of deep-rooted prejudices that decide who plays for our cricket team would keep blacks not only out of traditionally white sport, but out of the economy and the professions too.

But there is one great mystery about the cricket pattern described here: why do black people put up with it? There is a rich black cricketing tradition in this country going back decades — many black people play and follow the game. And yet most remain silent when the national team is reserved largely for whites — indeed, many continue to support the team and the games they play.

If a recent experience is a guide, this is not because black cricket followers are unaware of the problem. When I made some of these arguments on a radio talk show, black callers responded by agreeing vehemently that the sport is dominated by prejudice. And yet those who are keeping the “national” team a largely white preserve face little organised resistance from black cricket followers.

A black colleague who is also a cricket fan (and descended from a line of Western Cape black cricketers who were relegated to grassless fields by apartheid) offers an interesting explanation: black followers, she suggests, believe deep down that cricket is still essentially a white game and that it is therefore pointless to try to turn it into anything else.

There is no concrete evidence to support this theory. But gut feel says that it explains a lot. For example, racial bias is still a problem in international cricket despite the fact that most countries who play the game now have black majorities — and despite the fact that the game would die if it was not followed so avidly by billions on the Indian sub-continent. Why don’t the majority insist on rooting out the bias? Could it be because they too think cricket is still a white game and there is nothing black people can do to change it?

If the theory is accurate, the attitude it pinpoints is understandable but self-defeating. Cricket may be the game of empire, but it is now mostly played and followed by black people. It will remain dominated by a minority until the majority use their potential muscle to demand their fair share of the game.