While 2021 will be re­mem­bered for New Zealand be­ing crowned the in­au­gur­al ICC world Test cham­pi­ons and Aus­tralia win­ning their first ICC T20 World Cup, the off the field is­sue of racism in crick­et have al­so com­mand­ed shared at­ten­tion.

The Crick­et South Africa (CSA) So­cial Jus­tice and Na­tion-Build­ing (SJB) hear­ings start­ed in Ju­ly to ad­dress racism in crick­et. Sev­er­al past play­ers spoke about be­ing vic­tims of dis­crim­i­na­to­ry prac­tices and com­ments.

Tes­ti­fy­ing be­fore the SJN in Oc­to­ber, Jacques Faul, who act­ed as CSA's CEO on two oc­ca­sions said: "The ap­point­ments of Mark Bouch­er as Pro­teas coach and Graeme Smith as the di­rec­tor of crick­et sent out the wrong mes­sage.” He stat­ed fur­ther that the "op­tics were to­tal­ly wrong. We should have been po­lit­i­cal­ly more sen­si­tive. It's some­thing I re­gret.” Paul Adams told the in­quiry he was re­ferred to as “brown shit” while on in­ter­na­tion­al du­ty.

Al­le­ga­tions of in­sti­tu­tion­al racism by York­shire Crick­et Club by Azeem Rafiq has re­sult­ed in an on­go­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tion. The fall­outs have re­sult­ed in the for­mer chair­man Roger Hut­ton re­sign­ing on No­vem­ber 21; the Di­rec­tor of Crick­et, Mar­tyn Mox­on; head coach An­drew Gale and the en­tire coach­ing staff leav­ing the club. The club has al­so seen spon­sor­ship deals be­ing can­celled: Emer­ald Group Pub­lish­ing; York­shire Tea; Har­ro­gate Spring Wa­ter and Nike 4-year kit spon­sor­ship end­ing af­ter six months.

Michael Hold­ing has been one of the lead ad­vo­cate against racism in crick­et, sport in gen­er­al and so­ci­ety. His ap­peals to ad­dress racism have res­onat­ed with West In­dies play­ers [women and men] who have used every op­por­tu­ni­ty to ad­vo­cate for aware­ness and ad­dress racial dis­crim­i­na­tion by tak­ing the knee be­fore every match they play. Hold­ing has al­so called on all sportsper­sons to use their celebri­ty sta­tus and fol­low­ings on the var­i­ous so­cial me­dia plat­forms to "… say some­thing, peo­ple around the world will want to hear what they have to say and will want to try to un­der­stand what they had to say.”

What Hold­ing, Dar­ren Sam­my, Ja­son Hold­er, Azeem Rafiq, Aaron Phangiso; Dan Chris­t­ian; Ash­well Prince, Paul Adams and oth­ers who have been di­rect­ly and in­di­rect­ly af­fect­ed by racial dis­crim­i­na­tion have been speak­ing about adds to a rich cul­ture of tren­chant and pur­pose­ful sup­port for so­cial jus­tice and equal­i­ty by sportsper­sons in their re­spec­tive sports and so­ci­ety at large.

Some of the well-doc­u­ment­ed ex­am­ples of ath­letes' ac­tivism in­clude but not lim­it­ed to are:

*At the 1968 Olympics in Mex­i­co City, while on the podi­um to re­ceive their medals Tom­mie Smith and John Car­los wore black gloves and raised them in a fist to the sky on the play­ing of the US na­tion­al an­them in lieu of putting their hands over their hearts. The sig­nif­i­cance of the first was to high­light the civ­il rights strug­gles of African Amer­i­cans. In 2021, the South African male crick­eters opt­ed to use the fist as op­posed to tak­ing the knee as a means of high­light­ing the need to ad­dress racial ten­sion in South African in the post-Apartheid pe­ri­od.

*Ten­nis play­er Arthur Ashe and 46 oth­er per­sons were ar­rest­ed in 1985 for con­duct­ing an an­ti-apartheid protest out­side of the South African em­bassy in Wash­ing­ton.

*“In 1976, Olympic row­er Ernst led 18 of her team­mates at Yale Uni­ver­si­ty in a protest against un­equal fa­cil­i­ties be­ing pro­vid­ed for fe­male ath­letes in com­par­i­son to their male coun­ter­parts. They took the protests in­to the of­fice of the uni­ver­si­ty pres­i­dent, where they re­moved their shirts to re­veal “Ti­tle IX” writ­ten across their bod­ies. The sub­se­quent me­dia cov­er­age of the protest and the de­tails that caused it led to Yale be­ing pres­sured in­to the evening up the con­di­tions for all their ath­letes”.

*The Fierce Five, the US 2012 Olympic women's gold medal gym­nas­tic team all spoke out about sex­u­al abuse at the hands of ex-USA Gym­nas­tic doc­tor Lar­ry Nas­sar who was sen­tenced in 2018 to up to 175 years in prison for abus­ing more than 140 women and girls. The case of Nas­sar's abuse con­tributed to the re­in­force­ment and sig­nif­i­cance of the #MeToo Move­ment at ad­dress­ing sex­u­al abuse glob­al­ly across all so­cio-eco­nom­ic and po­lit­i­cal spheres of life.

*In 2016, Col­in Kaeper­nick took the knee dur­ing the play­ing of the US na­tion­al an­them in a pre­sea­son game against the Green Bay Pack­ers. Kaeper­nick's ac­tion was to demon­strate against po­lice bru­tal­i­ty against mi­nor­i­ty groups across the US. Kaeper­nick's de­ci­sion has se­vere­ly im­pact­ed his ca­reer but he con­tin­ues to stand firm­ly by his ac­tion.

The so­cial and po­lit­i­cal po­si­tions of ath­letes po­si­tion them to not on­ly raise aware­ness of so­cial is­sues such as racism, sex­ism and gen­der-based vi­o­lence but al­so ap­peal to sports ad­min­is­tra­tors, fans, politi­cians and oth­er oc­cu­piers of the cor­ri­dors of pow­er to take ac­tion so as to en­gen­der so­cial jus­tice and equal­i­ty.

Hold­ing puts it apt­ly when he says: “We know it's a crick­et prob­lem be­cause it's hap­pen­ing now in crick­et. But don't put it in a lit­tle box be­cause it's com­fort­able to put it in a box. It's not on­ly foot­ball or crick­et has a [racism] prob­lem. It's a so­ci­ety that has a prob­lem. And that is what we need to fix, that's we need to start. If we can ac­cept that it's so­ci­ety and not try to put it in small box­es, then we can get some­where." In oth­er words, in­voke the words of Cyril Li­onel Robert [C.L.R. James] racism and all forms of dis­crim­i­na­tion goes 'Be­yond a Bound­ary.'