Whose Side are you On?

“Everyone keeps asking me who I’ll be supporting”, said Sajid Mahmood’s father Shahid, on the eve of the last Test. “I’m in a great situation. Pakistan is our country and England is our country”. That he was asked suggests that the Tebbit test is still considered relevant for Muslims.

You will recall that the Tebbit test questioned the loyalty of migrants, claiming that they could only be properly integrated when they are supporting England at cricket. The question of loyalty is raised at a time of increasing marginalisation of Muslim communities and it is made all the more poignant with a government standing alone with the US in its support for Israeli terrorism in southern Lebanon.

The marginalisation is exacerbated by the rise in Islamophobia that followed the attacks on the twin towers and the London bombings of last year. But this was a catalyst, as there has long been suspicion of a culture that is little understood and refuses to bend to western influence.

The real basis of alienation is brought out through figures that show 60 per cent of Muslim households with the main breadwinner on a low income, the least likely group to own their own property, and an unemployment rate of 13 per cent, three times the national average. Combine these economic indicators with the massive increase in police stop and searches of Asians and a picture emerges of a community that has every right to feel excluded.

The Cantle report on the underlying causes of disturbances between Asian and white youths in Burnley, Bradford and Oldham in 2001 spoke of the depth of polarisation in the inner cities. Physical segregation is compounded by separate education, employment, places of worship, languages and social and cultural networks. “It means that communities operate on a series of parallel lives. They do not seem to touch at any point, let alone overlap and promote any meaningful interchange,” Cantle concluded.

This cultural separatism has been reflected in local cricket leagues. Research has shown that ethnic minorities prefer to organise their own games and leagues. The Yorkshire Quaid-I-Azam League, for example, is named after the domestic tournament in Pakistan. An all-Asian league was established in Bradford in 1983 and more recently an Inter-Island Amateur Cricket Cup, a Clive Lloyd Cup and a Sri Lankan League have been established in London.

Surely though, we should not feel threatened by people who chose to support another team than England. What makes the football World Cup the carnival and festival that it has become is the number of different sides that are followed in this country. Would we really expect ex-pats in Australia to follow anyone but England?

Maybe we have to consider why second and third-generation British-Asians are following the teams of their parents’ homeland. With the reality of racist abuse and the lack of encouragement for joining cricket teams it is a question of inclusion: why support a country that doesn’t want me? A. Sivanandan, director of the institute of Race Relations believes this is ingrained in cricket’s establishment: “It’s institutionalised racism. The smell of imperialism is in your nostrils all the time,” he said.

Cricket has the ability to bring people together on the field of play in a cultural setting. What it cannot do is eradicate the social and economic conditions that lead to marginalisation. This role requires political will and education, something we all should agree on.