Should The Experiences Of British-Pakistani Muslims Be Allowed In Crickets?

After the 7 July 2005 London bombings, British-Pakistani Muslims began to be discriminated against by white people in public spaces. For British-Pakistani Muslims, their ethnicity, religion and nationality all became sources of their identity, and became problematic if they were constructed against the British ideal. These forms of discrimination occurred in many spaces, one such space was cricket in England. Cricket in England since the 7 July 2005 London transport bombings has become a racialised space that has negatively affected the experiences of British-Pakistani Muslims cricketers. The research question this essay will address is, how have the lives British-Pakistani Muslim cricketers been affected after the July 2005 bombings and whether …show more content…
However, in clubs like the Yorkshire Cricket Club, racist policies ensured that a Muslim did not play first-class cricket for Yorkshire until Ajmal Shahzad in 2004. In the last decade, things have changed with some British-Pakistani Muslims having represented the English national cricket team, but little is known about the treatment they suffer on the ground level. Many of the sources that will be cited in this essay have conducted their research on British-Pakistani Muslim cricketers who were interviewed first hand and thus it is their interviews that make up the majority of the content for this essay. Majority of the participants in the various studies stated that Islam plays a major role in their lives, but does not necessarily play a role in their cricketing lives. However, after 7/7, they felt that anti-Muslim sentiments grew in fervour and many British-Pakistani Muslims began to be verbally abused, especially those who had beards and were more easily identifiable. These players were abused by fans, and one cricketer talks about how “after 7/7, [he] was on the bus with a kit bag with [his] gym clothes, and these two women were looking at [him] and making comments, and [he] said, ‘Don’t worry, I haven’t got a bomb in here!’. And they said ‘Well, can you blame …show more content…
In recent times, it was Islamophobia and institutional racism that was the cause for exclusion, but in the 1970s, it was a result of the South Asian Diaspora’s support for their cricket teams. Cricket amongst British-Pakistani’s began to get popular in the 1970s and this stemmed from the success of the Pakistani cricket team. As the team started getting better results, the team began getting media exposure and people began taking notice of them. The success of the Pakistan cricket team and the popularization of cricket in Pakistan created an imagined community that was shared across borders, one that was centered on following Pakistan cricket. This saw the British-Pakistani Diaspora be empowered because they saw people that shared the same background as them, becoming symbols of upward class mobility. The establishment denied British Pakistanis opportunities to elevate their status, but that was