Cricinfo - Blogs - Different Strokes - What's with the lack of ethnic players in Australia?

To begin with, many young boys from South Asian backgrounds have family expectations to deal with. Speaking from personal experience, I know that they come under immense pressure to follow academic pathways and ‘safe’ careers rather than chasing exotic cricket dreams. It’s ironic because these same families will watch every game of cricket and worship the stars but for their own sons, there’s a genuine desire to set them on a traditional career pathway that requires an emphasis on study. That will change but it might take a decade or so to show. Don’t ask me why this doesn’t manifest itself in England – I can’t figure that one out myself.

From a pure cricketing perspective, the nature of Australian pitches lends itself to bigger, stronger physiques dominating senior club cricket. You have to be strong and robust enough to hit the deck and get bounce, therefore more suited to the Anglo-Saxon body shape. In England and New Zealand, the nagging medium-pacers and spinners come into their own, thereby opening up the field to bowlers who may lack the pure ‘grunt’ but can do enough with the ball at 125 kph. Australian pitches need to offer more variety full stop. It will automatically create more opportunities for players with different body shapes and techniques. The added bonus is that it will allow our players to adapt better to foreign pitches too.

Put it this way; at 4 pm on a hot summer’s day when the pitch is flat and the ball isn’t swinging, players with my slender physique simply lack the power game to extract that little bit of extra bounce. Where I became cannon fodder late in the day, some of my stronger Aussie mates who were 15 kilos heavier, with strong buttocks and shoulders managed to hit the deck that little bit harder and get something out of the pitch. Ask yourself – how many wiry, Asian fast bowlers consistently dominated in Australia, especially after the new ball burst? Guys like Wasim Akram, Imran Khan, Safraz Nawaz, Kapil Dev and Ishant Sharma are strong chaps with height and bounce.

As a batsman, you need to be able to play the horizontal bat shots in Australia if you are going to make it into the top six of a Sheffield Shield team. Again, that has not traditionally been an Asian strength, although that too is changing slowly. If you can’t score off the short ball, you become too one-dimensional on these pitches. Give it a few years and the young lads from Asian descent will have been spoon fed on these shots from birth and they’ll be hooking and cutting instinctively. It’s certainly not an instinctive shot for my migrant generation.

Psychologically, it’s no secret that Australian club cricket is played hard and uncompromisingly, sometimes too much so perhaps. It’s easy enough to mistake some of the sledging as ‘racist’ but from my experience, I found most of it to be opportunistic rather than redneck. They’ll do anything to put you off your game and if you react to a jibe relating to colour or race, you’ve then got a reputation for taking the bait and the vicious cycle continues until it then becomes a bit personal or heated. That’s where the trouble really begins. Believe me, the white cricketers get sledged just as much but their sensitive points might be fat/ugly/cowardly/parentage/whatever. Don’t get me wrong – I find this whole sledging thing distasteful in the extreme but I cannot honestly say that any of the sledging I’ve experienced has been motivated by pure racism. Normally, I don’t bat long enough to hear the rest of the repertoire anyway!

That style of cricket may not come easily to players from Asian or Aboriginal descent so perhaps that filters a few youngsters out of the game. That will change too as more young kids are born and bred in Australia, rather than having learn to cope on the run as I did when I came here as a 15-year old. This abrasive style is not easy to get used to but once you accept that there’s generally no malice in it, you tend to laugh it off and they leave you alone. That’s been my experience anyway.

Of course there will be exceptions and individual tales of discrimination. That happens anywhere and it is a travesty of justice for the victim. But I cannot agree that it is systemic in Australia. I can only speak for myself but I cannot truthfully claim to have been disadvantaged for any other reason than a plain absence of talent.

Change will come but when it happens, I hope it happens naturally and to those who deserve it. Perhaps we need to make sure that we don’t lose talent to the game at a younger age for all of the reasons described above but I’m sure the Australian cricket team of the future will have an ethnic diversity to it that will one day make this essay redundant. It’s not a black and white issue – just shades of glorious colour!

Hi Fox,

I think it is a question of numbers. At the last census in 2006, there were 150000 Indian born Australians. By comparison, there were over a million Indian born Britons.

More strikingly, in 1986, there were 48000 Indian Australians. In 1981, there were 680000 Indian Britons.

Its a guess, but I think there aren't many 18-25 year old Australian boys of Indian/South Asian heritage. The total population of Indian Australians is less than 1% of Australia's total. Our migrant population would skew younger than the total population, but it would still be less than 1%.

With only 100 or so first class cricket 'jobs' in Australia, a fair representation for Indian/South Asian cricketers would be about 1 player.

Usman Kuwaja played quite a bit for NSW last year, and I know there are a few other players in development squads around the states, so I think there really isn't a problem to fix.

cheers,

Ross

This is an issue that I have brought up a numerous number of times on various blogs.

I don't agree with the author on just the physical aspect of the game, for starters West Indies is no different when it comes to heat and we have had some excellent players of Asian origin in their team as well.

Like the poster Fraser Neele has pointed out, its more to do with people of colour not graduating to the next level even from Club Cricket.

I cannot believe that a second or third generation immigrant of any origin cannot fit both physically and psychologically. For god sake are we now saying Croatian's and Serbian's etc can fit in but not a Indian or Pakistani or Srilankan or for that matter a Zimbabwean etc?

Cricket is probably the only Aussie sport where its an exclusive Anglo Saxon club and it probably will remain so till there is a significant shift in the people that run the game.

But then again I don't think the public in general will allow it to happen remember Cathy Freeman?

Asians playing cricket in Australia, is actually a smaller dream than Asian playing cricket in Asia!

At least in Australia, one can play grade cricket at all. Forget being able to do that anywhere in Asia unless you are ‘privileged’. Nepotism, corruption, poor cricketing facilities, social implications (if you play cricket, you are a loser, smart people go to the Uni), and poverty (Not everyone can afford to buy the gear) are only some of the challenges prevailing in Asia.

One can argue that there are issues relating to cricket in Australia, but none ‘unfair’. There are always factors such as, someone mentioned in this thread, “Booze Culture”, that isolate an individual in the club environment which results into the player either not enjoying his cricket or quitting the club altogether.

I do not like the word “adapt” in a sense that a person can only adapt within a sphere made up of his background, culture, religion, family and socio-economic background. So, “adaptability” is always an equation naturally biased towards the majority. So, numbers is they key here. For example, a traditional Muslim cricketer will always have a tough time fitting in an Australian cricket club because he is in the minority. I used the word ‘traditional Muslim’ because Muslims like Shoaib Akhtar do not fit in an All Muslim Pakistani team either (He is Roy of Pakistan)!

Asian cricketers in Australia, have unlimited potential, but then who doesn’t. Being an Asian myself, I’m worried that Asians in general play cricket as a sport of passion only. Quite a few of them at times, lack commitment, professionalism, grit, and perseverance. This is all because they don’t believe that they can make a living out of this sport, they do not treat it as a possible profession!

"So statistically you would expect in Australias 6 1st class teams (72 players) 65 white, 6 Asian, 0-1 Aboriginal.".

I think its important to remember that cricket is essentially an anglo game. If you look at the crowds, they're either white (british descent) or from other countries where the game is strong (India, sri lanka and pakistan in particular).

Cricket is not good at engaging crowds outside its traditional market. 20/20 is working on this, but it is a real weakness of the game.

Many aboriginals now play australian football and enhance the game. Often though, their primary skill is that they are fast runners, and that skill may not be relevant to cricket.

Plus it costs money to get into cricket (more than other sports). This probably makes the game less open to people from disadvantaged backgrounds.

Some thoughts.