If anybody had wondered as to the scale of English cricket’s racism problem, this week their answer came without ambiguity.
On Tuesday, in front of the Department of Digital, Culture, Media and Sport’s committee, senior figures from the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) lined up with county chairmen, supposedly to discuss their attempts to tackle the racism and discrimination running through the sport.
What we instead heard was jaw-dropping. Mike O’Farrell, the Middlesex chairman, suggested to MPs that the Black British community found “the football and rugby world … more attractive” and that the South Asian community did not wish “to commit the same time that is necessary [to cricket]” because they “prefer to go into other educational fields”.
