by At the Hay Festival to talk about what the event’s website terms cricket’s ‘systemic biases’, legendary comedian Stephen Fry said of MCC: “He has a very disturbing public face, beet-yellow aristocrats . and orange blazers sitting in this space in front of the Long Room looking as if they came out of an Edwardian cartoon.” We’ll have to wait and see how club members react to what Mr Fry described – for me, not owning a club blazer (admittedly makes me look a bit like a death watch beetle ) are not particularly beets, I felt it. Must be talking about someone else. Some of my fellow members, however, will be less than amused, and I will wonder what on earth Mr. Fry is up to.
It is not just bad manners in any club to attack other members in public; To do that is a much higher level of insult when you are a man who was chosen by the club just two years ago for the great honor of being its president. Mr Fry said he felt there was a ‘privilege and classiness’ about the club as if we were sitting in the MCC type stands chatting to each other in Latin about our land estates. It is far too serious to ask why Mr. Fry (a very intelligent man whom I know and respect) agreed to join a club which he despised, not to mention his to be its president. He must understand that he is engaging in a prejudicial act by demonstrating his membership. It is just as foolish as those who take the example of one person of color and attach all kinds of failure to all other people of color. I think Mr. Fry would regret such an ignorant attitude, so he can’t be too surprised that people resent his comments about his fellow MCC members.
His apparently self-hating comments came in a debate sparked by the imminent publication of a book by Azeem Rafiq, which caused an earthquake in Yorkshire when he accused various former colleagues there of racism – my colleague Michael Vaughan in among, that nothing could be done against him. to create. Only one, Gary Ballance, admitted bad behaviour, and apologized. Hay’s website is pushing the report of the Independent Commission for Equality in Cricket, which (as any look at its composition will show) was a self-fulfilling prophecy and concluded (in the words of the festival) ‘cricket is rife with structural racism’ and institutional, sexism. , classism and elitism.’ Also on the panel was Claire Taylor, former England women’s cricketer.
No one supports or defends racism in cricket, and anyone practicing it at any level of the game should be banned from their club immediately. Apparently there is not the same hatred for those who want to insult someone’s class (average or above, and leaning towards the professions), gender (male), age (average or above, again) and an (elite) educational background, which, as Mr. Fry knows, they didn’t talk much about. MCC is a club of a certain demographic because it has been people from that demographic who have played cricket the most in the last 30 or 40 years, due to being almost destroyed in a state school system by those with militant anti-racist politics at them. in sympathy.
Mr Fry may have earned Hay a free laugh among his guilt-ridden elite when he called out MCC members, but it does nothing to heal cricket’s self-inflicted wounds. The main barriers to ‘inclusion’ at MCC are a 25 year waiting list and a high annual subscription, not racism, elitism and classism. At least Rafiq had the grace to say that ‘middle-aged white men’ were the main people who supported him when he made his accusations; although some of those charges did not stand up. Rafiq himself has been out for anti-Semitic tweets, showing that he is not perfect even when it comes to race. His book is being eagerly awaited, although perhaps not for the reasons he would have liked, and is being watched by some of his former colleagues’ lawyers.
It seems that even the England and Wales Cricket Board has decided that the game is doing more harm than good by running a witch hunt on the so called ‘racists’. Charges dismissed in Essex; Yorkshire, despite a rescue attempt by ex-MCC President Philip Hodson and ex-ECB chairman Colin Graves, is still not fully back on its feet, and the political posturing and victory signaling of anyone seen in the game. The sooner those with a high profile in the game stop looking for reasons to mark themselves over race, and start making a constructive effort for everyone in the world of cricket to get on with each other and behave well in towards each other, the better.
