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Under the watchful domes of the Grand Mosque, an evening game in the Ramadan Cup is in full swing. On the vast playing area at Bradford Park Avenue, a first-class venue until 1996, two teams of Muslim cricketers are spending the final hours of their day’s fasting playing a feverishly aggressive 16-over match. Spinners are ripping the pink ball in the fading light, batsmen are carving merrily away. A smattering of spectators, young and old, are strolling the perimeter, offering pointedly vocal advice. This is, unmistakably, a south Asian cricket scene in an urban Yorkshire setting.
There has been added excitement among the local British-Pakistani community this week, with the country of their forefathers hoping to clinch a series victory against England at Headingley in the second Test that starts tomorrow. “I can’t count how many calls I’ve had asking if I can get tickets this week since Pakistan won at Lord’s,” Nasa Hussain, Yorkshire’s community development officer in Bradford, said. “I can’t get them any. But the excitement it has created is huge.”
The scene at Park Avenue is an exception that proves a rule of topicality to English cricket. This month, to great fanfare, the ECB launched an 11-point action plan “to better engage with south Asian communities”, an acknowledgment that the interest in the game among those sections of society, chiefly in urban areas, has not been matched by facilities, coaching or general infrastructure.
Through funding from the ECB, Sport England and Bradford council, Park Avenue was reopened last year as part of a £5.5 million project designed to make it a hub for the local community and a potential first-class venue again. A game between Asian teams on such a vast expanse of well-manicured turf is a rare sight in an urban area.
But a game of Asians playing against Asians is not a rare sight. Partly as a result of the shortage of facilities, partly due to the cultural differences in club cricket, the majority of south Asian cricketers have felt excluded from the mainstream — an explanation, in part, for the glaring statistic that one third of recreational cricketers are from south Asian communities, but only 4 per cent of professional cricketers.
“There is a bias in the game that needs to change,” Hussain said. “Too many coaches still have the attitude of seeing what a young player looks like, rather than what he can do. He can bat like Sachin Tendulkar, but he’s got black socks on so he doesn’t get picked. We need to find a way of getting these kids on to the mainstream.”
The visit of Pakistan to West Yorkshire this week is a reminder that this is one of the prime focus areas for the ECB’s new action plan. Headingley is surrounded by three of the ten areas targeted for greater integration: Bradford, Leeds and Kirklees. With cricket struggling to hold on to its traditional audiences, so the rationale goes, these are areas in which there are large Asian populations desperate to play a bigger part in the game.
One of the driving forces behind the new action plan is Lord Patel of Bradford, now an ECB board member. “It’s not just about targeting a community who have felt disengaged,” he said. “It’s sound business sense, too. It’s about looking at an extra million people who are interested in the game, perhaps a third of customers who are banging on the door of your shop. But the doors have remained closed to them for too long.”
Patel grew up a short drive across town from Park Avenue and, as a cricket-mad youngster, would catch two buses to play at Manningham Mills, a predominantly white club. He stayed, but most of his Asian friends who came to the club did not feel comfortable, a feeling replicated thousandfold across the communities. Blame is not apportioned to one section or the other, but there has undoubtedly been a cultural separation in club cricket that has barely diminished over the years.
As a result, Asian leagues were established, such as the Quaid e Azam competition in Bradford, existing separately to the mainstream club structures, which have played such a part in producing cricketers for Yorkshire.
“I didn’t eat meat, I didn’t drink and I didn’t really fit in. You’d like to think that those barriers would have broken down 40 years after I experienced that, but they still exist,” Lord Patel said. “There are other factors that have played a part in the disengagement, of course, and Islamophobia has undoubtedly played a part in recent years. But cricket is a game that can bring people together and we’ve got to work harder to do that.”
Greater integration is one thing, another is the extent to which English cricket would benefit from the different skill sets fostered in south Asian communities. Adil Rashid emerged from the Bradford area, a rare wrist spinner to make the grade for England who visits Park Avenue to practise. The presence of Moeen Ali as a role model in England’s Test team has been a huge step forward. But there remains a feeling that the south Asian community could be an untapped source of unorthodox talents.
“Someone said to me last week after watching Dom Bess bowl for England, ‘There must be a thousand young kids in Pakistan frying pakoras that can bowl better than Dom Bess,’ ” Hussain said. “I know what he means, you see kids turning the ball a foot. There are Pakistani kids in this country who can do the same, raw talent that needs to be nurtured. But they’re doing it their own way, so they quite often don’t come to the fore.”
There are other parts of Yorkshire where considerable progress has been made in bridging that longstanding cultural divide. A few miles away in Batley, Mount Cricket Club have become standard-bearers for the game’s ability to straddle cultural divides. Having established themselves in the largely Asian Dewsbury & District League, Mount now play in the Halifax League against a mix of opponents. They found it difficult to gain access to a different league, but their new competition has been welcoming.
“We wanted to make the club a real focus for the community,” Abdul Ravat, the club’s development officer, said. “We wanted to use cricket to help heal social tensions and to bring people together.”
Jo Cox, the MP for the area until she was murdered two years ago, was a big supporter of the Muslim club’s ambitions. In their own community, drawn largely from Indian Gujarati background, they have launched a hugely successful girls’ cricket section, developing their own female coaches. They have established a series of interfaith matches with a team from Vatican City. The Light of Faith Tour will be staged again this summer, with a team from the Vatican playing Mount at Lord’s, hosted by Sadiq Khan. “It’s amazing how that has grown,” Ravat said. “But it shows what cricket can do.”
Yet Mount find themselves in need of better facilities. They play at a ground owned by Kirklees council, but the success of their youth programmes mean they need more space. They suffer from vandalism and the portable buildings they use as a pavilion were victim to an arson attack last year. A project called “Field of Dreams” has been launched in the hope that funding can be sourced to give their home a more permanent feel. “We have come a long way with what we have,” Ravat said. “Imagine what else we could do with better facilities.”
At Great Horton Church, another largely Asian club on the outskirts of Bradford, the under-15 team gathers for their evening game. Among the earliest to arrive is a tall all-rounder, a left-arm spinner and technically sound batsman, who recently reached the latter stages of trials for Yorkshire’s under-14 side. There had been high hopes that he would make it but he missed out, prompting familiar feelings of rejection. “There are not enough Asian coaches in the system and that’s something the project needs to address,” Patel said.
Selection often leads to disgruntlement, sometimes legitimately. Across the south Asian cricketing population, there are recurring tales of feeling that they remain on the outside looking in. “We often felt the kids weren’t getting in because they didn’t have the best kit,” Taj Butt, the Great Horton club secretary, said. “We started buying white socks for them to take to the trials, in case that would help.”
Whether feelings of marginalisation are real or imagined, these are the perceptions prevalent among a large section of the south Asian cricketing community with which the ECB’s new project must contend. Improved facilities and more Asian coaches is a start. But it will take a lot more than handing out pairs of white socks to bridge the cultural gaps that have existed for too long in many parts of the country.
The key numbers
5.7% Of the population of England and Wales who are south Asians including 1.4 million of Indian ethnicity and 1.1m of Pakistani ethnicity
1/3 Proportion of recreational players in England and Wales from south Asian communities
79% Of south Asian players who play once a week, compared with 50% of white British
3% Of tickets across all cricket bought by south Asians. But 40% of tickets for last year’s Champions Trophy were bought by south Asians
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/the-british-pakistanis-lost-to-english-cricket-tlwngkc7r
There has been added excitement among the local British-Pakistani community this week, with the country of their forefathers hoping to clinch a series victory against England at Headingley in the second Test that starts tomorrow. “I can’t count how many calls I’ve had asking if I can get tickets this week since Pakistan won at Lord’s,” Nasa Hussain, Yorkshire’s community development officer in Bradford, said. “I can’t get them any. But the excitement it has created is huge.”
The scene at Park Avenue is an exception that proves a rule of topicality to English cricket. This month, to great fanfare, the ECB launched an 11-point action plan “to better engage with south Asian communities”, an acknowledgment that the interest in the game among those sections of society, chiefly in urban areas, has not been matched by facilities, coaching or general infrastructure.
Through funding from the ECB, Sport England and Bradford council, Park Avenue was reopened last year as part of a £5.5 million project designed to make it a hub for the local community and a potential first-class venue again. A game between Asian teams on such a vast expanse of well-manicured turf is a rare sight in an urban area.
But a game of Asians playing against Asians is not a rare sight. Partly as a result of the shortage of facilities, partly due to the cultural differences in club cricket, the majority of south Asian cricketers have felt excluded from the mainstream — an explanation, in part, for the glaring statistic that one third of recreational cricketers are from south Asian communities, but only 4 per cent of professional cricketers.
“There is a bias in the game that needs to change,” Hussain said. “Too many coaches still have the attitude of seeing what a young player looks like, rather than what he can do. He can bat like Sachin Tendulkar, but he’s got black socks on so he doesn’t get picked. We need to find a way of getting these kids on to the mainstream.”
The visit of Pakistan to West Yorkshire this week is a reminder that this is one of the prime focus areas for the ECB’s new action plan. Headingley is surrounded by three of the ten areas targeted for greater integration: Bradford, Leeds and Kirklees. With cricket struggling to hold on to its traditional audiences, so the rationale goes, these are areas in which there are large Asian populations desperate to play a bigger part in the game.
One of the driving forces behind the new action plan is Lord Patel of Bradford, now an ECB board member. “It’s not just about targeting a community who have felt disengaged,” he said. “It’s sound business sense, too. It’s about looking at an extra million people who are interested in the game, perhaps a third of customers who are banging on the door of your shop. But the doors have remained closed to them for too long.”
Patel grew up a short drive across town from Park Avenue and, as a cricket-mad youngster, would catch two buses to play at Manningham Mills, a predominantly white club. He stayed, but most of his Asian friends who came to the club did not feel comfortable, a feeling replicated thousandfold across the communities. Blame is not apportioned to one section or the other, but there has undoubtedly been a cultural separation in club cricket that has barely diminished over the years.
As a result, Asian leagues were established, such as the Quaid e Azam competition in Bradford, existing separately to the mainstream club structures, which have played such a part in producing cricketers for Yorkshire.
“I didn’t eat meat, I didn’t drink and I didn’t really fit in. You’d like to think that those barriers would have broken down 40 years after I experienced that, but they still exist,” Lord Patel said. “There are other factors that have played a part in the disengagement, of course, and Islamophobia has undoubtedly played a part in recent years. But cricket is a game that can bring people together and we’ve got to work harder to do that.”
Greater integration is one thing, another is the extent to which English cricket would benefit from the different skill sets fostered in south Asian communities. Adil Rashid emerged from the Bradford area, a rare wrist spinner to make the grade for England who visits Park Avenue to practise. The presence of Moeen Ali as a role model in England’s Test team has been a huge step forward. But there remains a feeling that the south Asian community could be an untapped source of unorthodox talents.
“Someone said to me last week after watching Dom Bess bowl for England, ‘There must be a thousand young kids in Pakistan frying pakoras that can bowl better than Dom Bess,’ ” Hussain said. “I know what he means, you see kids turning the ball a foot. There are Pakistani kids in this country who can do the same, raw talent that needs to be nurtured. But they’re doing it their own way, so they quite often don’t come to the fore.”
There are other parts of Yorkshire where considerable progress has been made in bridging that longstanding cultural divide. A few miles away in Batley, Mount Cricket Club have become standard-bearers for the game’s ability to straddle cultural divides. Having established themselves in the largely Asian Dewsbury & District League, Mount now play in the Halifax League against a mix of opponents. They found it difficult to gain access to a different league, but their new competition has been welcoming.
“We wanted to make the club a real focus for the community,” Abdul Ravat, the club’s development officer, said. “We wanted to use cricket to help heal social tensions and to bring people together.”
Jo Cox, the MP for the area until she was murdered two years ago, was a big supporter of the Muslim club’s ambitions. In their own community, drawn largely from Indian Gujarati background, they have launched a hugely successful girls’ cricket section, developing their own female coaches. They have established a series of interfaith matches with a team from Vatican City. The Light of Faith Tour will be staged again this summer, with a team from the Vatican playing Mount at Lord’s, hosted by Sadiq Khan. “It’s amazing how that has grown,” Ravat said. “But it shows what cricket can do.”
Yet Mount find themselves in need of better facilities. They play at a ground owned by Kirklees council, but the success of their youth programmes mean they need more space. They suffer from vandalism and the portable buildings they use as a pavilion were victim to an arson attack last year. A project called “Field of Dreams” has been launched in the hope that funding can be sourced to give their home a more permanent feel. “We have come a long way with what we have,” Ravat said. “Imagine what else we could do with better facilities.”
At Great Horton Church, another largely Asian club on the outskirts of Bradford, the under-15 team gathers for their evening game. Among the earliest to arrive is a tall all-rounder, a left-arm spinner and technically sound batsman, who recently reached the latter stages of trials for Yorkshire’s under-14 side. There had been high hopes that he would make it but he missed out, prompting familiar feelings of rejection. “There are not enough Asian coaches in the system and that’s something the project needs to address,” Patel said.
Selection often leads to disgruntlement, sometimes legitimately. Across the south Asian cricketing population, there are recurring tales of feeling that they remain on the outside looking in. “We often felt the kids weren’t getting in because they didn’t have the best kit,” Taj Butt, the Great Horton club secretary, said. “We started buying white socks for them to take to the trials, in case that would help.”
Whether feelings of marginalisation are real or imagined, these are the perceptions prevalent among a large section of the south Asian cricketing community with which the ECB’s new project must contend. Improved facilities and more Asian coaches is a start. But it will take a lot more than handing out pairs of white socks to bridge the cultural gaps that have existed for too long in many parts of the country.
The key numbers
5.7% Of the population of England and Wales who are south Asians including 1.4 million of Indian ethnicity and 1.1m of Pakistani ethnicity
1/3 Proportion of recreational players in England and Wales from south Asian communities
79% Of south Asian players who play once a week, compared with 50% of white British
3% Of tickets across all cricket bought by south Asians. But 40% of tickets for last year’s Champions Trophy were bought by south Asians
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/the-british-pakistanis-lost-to-english-cricket-tlwngkc7r
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