Mamoon, the reason why you're deflecting is because you've been exposed for your double standards and hypocrisy. We're talking about the treatment of aspiring and professional Pakistanis/Desi/Muslim and non-Muslim cricketers in England and Pakistan (respectively), so I wonder why you're bringing up the issues of minorities in the general population. But how can I forget it's another convenient opportunity for you to come up with your far left rhetoric.
Look, if you want to call it double standards and hypocrisy, feel free to do so. My only job is to explain my position and not to force you to change your perspective of my views.
Sports is a reflection of society. What goes on in cricket circles is not independent of what goes on in the country in general. If Muslims were getting discriminated and attacked all over the UK, it would have been greatly prevalent in cricket as well.
Does racism and discrimination exist in the UK? Yes it does in every country. However, in spite of that, the UK is amongst the most tolerant and open-minded countries in the world. Other countries, including Pakistan, are far more racist. If you don’t want me to drag Pakistan into this, then we can take example of Eastern European countries who are far more racist than the UK.
You are also a British Pakistani, there are hundreds of British Pakistanis on this forum and vast majority of my cousins are British Pakistanis as well.
There is a reason why all of you people are happily settled in England and will make a million excuses if I ask you to come back to Pakistan. The reason is that it is a wonderful place to live and you are not getting discriminated and attacked to the point where you will be forced to think about leaving the country. You are getting your rights and you are also getting working opportunities.
That is true for English cricket as well because as I said, it is nothing but a reflection of the English society. Asian cricketers who have proved that they are good enough have had their opportunities in both County cricket and international cricket.
They have even been given prominence in terms of leadership roles. However, whenever an Asian player is treated unfairly, we immediately play the racism card. That is the prime issue with this matter.
Think about it yourself - does it make any sense for Yorkshire CCC to give him the opportunity to become the youngest ever T20 captain in their history while discriminating against him at the same time?
As for your first sentence, this is something I'd expect from a troll. That respect was no longer warranted when he decided to go into match fixing. I like how you're sympathetic towards Kaneria whereas with Rafiq, your double standard/hypocrisy comes out once again when you said in an earlier post:
"ECB actually let him off easily by fining him for £500 and banning him for a month. He should have been booted out for good because this type of behavior and attitude are not acceptable".
If you're going to talk about someone's behaviour, at least spell the word correctly.
That is why I said
“I have a lot of respect for the way Kaneria conducted himself while he was a Pakistan player.”
I obviously don’t respect him now, but during his time as a Pakistan player, he was a model professional.
As far as Rafiq is concerned, he called ECB incompetent and the U-19 coach a “useless w*nker” because he was dropped due to poor performances.
That sums up the type of character he is. Always looking to blame others and finding excuses for his own failures. People like him are always quick to cry about racism because it presents yet another opportunity to blame others for their failures.
Behaviour is how you spell it in British English.
Behavior is how you spell it in American English.
I spelt the word correctly - the problem is with your lack of command on the English language in spite of growing up in England.
I have no problem with you calling Salah a diver because he's been guilty of this on numerous occasions. I even mentioned this myself on that thread corresponding to the topic. The problem here is again you're deflecting from the point I made in my previous post. You called that particular incident a dive when it 100% wasn't. Instead of being the bigger man and accepting your error of judgement, you decided to turn on every Muslim (who were correcting you) by saying "the truth is that people are over-defensive of Salah because of “some” obvious reasons". If you can't accept or comprehend a simple footballing decision, just don't bring religion or someone's beliefs as an escape route.
It was a dive from what I saw. And besides, considering his history, my first inclination is and will be that Salah has dived every time he goes down easily without clear contact, simply because he is a diver and that cannot be denied.
But the problem is that I have the same inclination for the likes of Neymar, Dele Alli, Sterling, Vardy, Zaha, Leroy Sane etc. who are also divers. However, as usual, if I criticize these players for diving then it is not a problem, but as soon as I highlight Salah or Mane, then it becomes an issue of bigotry and bias.
"if an underperforming, Asian player gets dropped, he can play the race card and he will immediately gather sympathy from gullible folks .
If you're aiming this at me, let me remind you once again that you will never be able to relate to these issues nor come to understanding the ground realities, simply because you come from a privileged background in Pakistan. For your information, I was once coached by Aftab Habib, in case you don't know who he is, he played 2 test matches for England. Also, one of my best friends was signed up by Middlessex but chose Medicine over cricket. As you can imagine, I'm relatively well versed with what goes on behind the scenes when it comes to English cricket, so with the greatest of respect stick to your specialities because racism in English cricket isn't one of them!
Once again, racism in sport is a reflection of racism in that country in general. The degree of racism in cricket in particular is unlikely to be much higher than racism in the UK in general.
So if you are living comfortably in the UK and have no intention of coming back of Pakistan because you are getting due rights and work opportunities in the UK, then it clearly shows that life for Asian cricketers in England is unlikely to be much different.
Of course there will be some incidents of isolated racism (like in all countries) but there is a difference between isolated racism and systematic racism.
Rafiq was given all the opportunities when he was a good player and he wasn’t held back because Yorkshire CCC/ECB was racist towards him.
He was England U-19 captain and also the youngest Yorkshire CCC captain. That shouldn’t happen in a racist structure.
The bottom-line is that if an Asian cricket is good enough and performs consistently, he will get opportunities. Nothing will hold him back.
And the successful players rarely whine about racism anyway. Adil Rashid is the most successful Asian player in recent times who also spent 15 years at Yorkshire CCC, but you won’t really see him attack ECB or his club for racism. Why? Because he does not need it. His performance is good enough for him to bypass all the white spinners and cement himself as England’s main spinner in white ball cricket.
