GLAMMY

[MacAdder]

Not really, Glamorgan, like so many other counties, don’t seem to have had many black home produced players down the years - there haven’t been many at all following in the footsteps of someone like Tony Cordle have there.

No you are right, it doesnt look great and although we had some top cricketers of colour play for us down the years, home grown very few.

Mr Williams says..
"In 2020, former Glamorgan cricketer Mohsin Arif said in a Telegraph article that there had been preferential treatment for white players at the county"
The problem I have with this is that preferential treatment goes on all the time, whether in sport or any workplace.
Why does it have to be linked to racism?

It is also mentioned in the article that the Cardiff midweek league contained many Asian players but none "made it" so to speak.
I played a few games in that league myself and there were plenty of white talented cricketers who too were never "spotted".
I would agree though that the vast percentage of cricketers in Cardiff's leagues are Asian.
You see them playing in the streets and in Pontcanna fields all year round.

I would say that cricket was, and still is to a certain extent an elitist sport. It strikes me as a bit of a closed shop at the top level and if there were a bunch of talented youngsters on the shortlist, chances are the public school kid or the chairman's business partner's boy or the nephew of a former England player would get the nod.

To me, that's life.

It would be interesting to hear say Ravi Shastri's or Waqar Younis's view on their experience of possible racism during their time at the club or even Javed Miandad's.
I'm sure if the latter was a victim of racism he'd have sorted it out himself

[the other bob wilson]

No you are right, it doesnt look great and although we had some top cricketers of colour play for us down the years, home grown very few.

Mr Williams says..
"In 2020, former Glamorgan cricketer Mohsin Arif said in a Telegraph article that there had been preferential treatment for white players at the county"
The problem I have with this is that preferential treatment goes on all the time, whether in sport or any workplace.
Why does it have to be linked to racism?

It is also mentioned in the article that the Cardiff midweek league contained many Asian players but none "made it" so to speak.
I played a few games in that league myself and there were plenty of white talented cricketers who too were never "spotted".
I would agree though that the vast percentage of cricketers in Cardiff's leagues are Asian.
You see them playing in the streets and in Pontcanna fields all year round.

I would say that cricket was, and still is to a certain extent an elitist sport. It strikes me as a bit of a closed shop at the top level and if there were a bunch of talented youngsters on the shortlist, chances are the public school kid or the chairman's business partner's boy or the nephew of a former England player would get the nod.

To me, that's life.

It would be interesting to hear say Ravi Shastri's or Waqar Younis's view on their experience of possible racism during their time at the club or even Javed Miandad's.
I'm sure if the latter was a victim of racism he'd have sorted it out himself

I played a few games in the midweek league as well in the seventies. They were ahead of their time in that they were twenty over games, so you had to get on with it when it came to batting. I kidded myself I was a decent player of spin bowling when I was a kid, but that opinion changed when we played a team of Asian youngsters at Blackweir one evening. I came in at about number seven with us having early wickets , but our best batsman was still there and I stayed with him as we put on about fifty.

However, my contribution to the partnership was very small as i ended up facing two or three overs from someone who seemed to me to be about fifteen. He may have been young, but he was the first "proper" spin bowler I'd ever faced (all the others has just been slow bowlers) - he was quicker through the air than many of the so called quick bowlers I'd faced up to then, landed the ball on a sixpence and was actually turning it consistently, I'd never faced anything like it in my life before or since. From memory, I played out a couple of maidens and was quite pleased to have kept him out, any attacking shot was beyond me though as I proved when I finally lost patience and played a daft cut shot that got me out.

I've long forgotten the young boy's name now, but I sought it out after the game because I thought I'd be hearing it again as he made his way into first class cricket, but it never happened - the Asian lads murdered us and had a couple of talented batsmen as well, but they never went any further. Maybe, they didn't want to or they figured it wasn't worth trying because, back then, any players of Asian or Caribbean heritage in the first class game tended to be from overseas.

The team I played for had some good players, but three or four of that Asian side we played were another level up again. I'm sure that's a story which can be repeated all over the country down the years and yet barely any England qualified players with an Asian background emerged until we saw the likes of Owais Shah, Adil Rashid and Moeen Ali coming through, so you have to think that racism, whether intentional or not, played some part in that.

About five years ago, maybe a bit longer, Hugh Morris was asked to name one youngster they had coming through at Glamorgan who would make it in the first class game - he chose an Asian leg spinner who he said had tremendous ability. From memory, he was fourteen at the time and so I kept an eye open for a mention of this boy playing in our second team. I never saw anything though and mentioned what Hugh Morris had said to a mate of mine who watches a lot of second team cricket. At first, he thought I must have got it wrong, but then he remembered a youngster who he'd seen in a game some years earlier who quite impressed him, but he never saw him play again. Was he really as good as Hugh Morris thought he was I wonder, but, whether he was or not, I think cricket is still a game where the British non white player has a harder job to break through than a white one.