I would not wish to detract from Emma Raducanu’s incredible and unexpected—no sets lost—victory in the US Open Tennis Championship. She is a beautiful, talented, modest and highly intelligent young lady. She has been claimed by the woke left as a shining example of what immigrants bring to this country. They also seem to be putting her beyond any criticism as John McEnroe continues to be pilloried for his comment that ‘it all got a bit too much for her’ when she pulled out of a match at Wimbledon. This, even though she confirmed exactly that after the match. I hope she can resist being lured into the woke-Remainer network by becoming a symbol of all we should love about immigrants (a lot in my view) but concomitantly hating Britain. The irony of those who hold her up as a shining example of what immigrants can achieve is that they omit to mention where it has been achieved—in Britain. Imagine how much luck a young Saudi or Afghanistani version of Emma Raducanu would have in achieving such a goal? None I imagine. I likewise hope she can resist the lure of China to claim her as one of their own. She may well have achieved her tennis dream had she lived in China but at a huge cost to her personal liberty and freedom of speech. So, well done Emma Raducanu but does anyone remember the fate of the former England cricketer Ollie Robinson?
While I follow tennis, the only thing I like about cricket is the theme tune to Test Match Special (Soul Limbo by Booker T and the MJ’s – listen here). Beyond that, despite the enthusiasm my Australian and Canadian cousins show for the game, I just cannot get enthused. After all, I am a Scot and among the impressive array of things we are terrible at, cricket is high on the list. The game bamboozles me in two ways: first ‘what is going on?’; and second ‘why is anyone interested?’.
But cricket was in the headlines in June, and it was hard not to take an interest due to the reasons it was there. A young man, Ollie Robinson, was suspended from the England cricket team and seems to have had his career ended over some jokes he shared on Twitter nine years ago. The tweets are of a racist and sexist nature, albeit that they were meant to be light-hearted and not deliberately offensive.
This was nine years ago when he was 18 years old. Legally an adult but still, by some definitions, an adolescent and, according to the UK Border Force who classify illegal migrants up to the age of 25 as children he was barely a teenager. According to reports in the sports pages at the time other cricketers were, likewise, being investigated for historical tweets of an unsavoury nature. One was 16 years old at the time. The offence archaeologists are always hard at work.
Is this really about racism or is it a further example of the overt politicisation of sport? I have no strong feelings about this phenomenon but it does seem unbalanced to try to ban the wearing of poppies by England and Scotland footballers on Armistice Day on the basis—completely erroneous—that this is a political gesture while tolerating ‘taking the knee’ by footballers prior to a match. The latter is, ostensibly, a political gesture as it is in support of Black Lives Matter, an organisation with the proclaimed aims of ending capitalism and defunding the police.
Racist chanting and gesturing at sport are repulsive but why is it that once the whistle blows at a football match calling the referee a ‘blind bald-headed old **** who should ****-off back to the lower leagues’ passes muster with equanimity. On the other hand, make a derogatory comment about women footballers or officials and you may as well run your season ticket through the shredder yourself. I am not advocating, just saying.
The continued persecution of Ollie Robinson is unfair. Apparently, friends testified that he is not racist in fact, far from it. He issued an abject apology which probably made things worse. The easily offended or those operating on their behalf purely take this as an admission of guilt. As the Hon Toby Young explained after his attempt at apology for the careless tweets that prevented him taking his place as an adviser to the Office for Students, offering an apology is ‘like throwing a hunk of raw meat to a shoal of piranha fish in the hope that will calm them down.’
Of course, the only amount of racism that is tolerable is none, but I doubt that racism and the historical expression of homophobic or racist comments is what has put the wind up the England and Wales Cricket Board. Like any professional sport—the word ‘professional’ being operative—international cricket exists to make money for the players, the clubs, the shareholders and anyone else with a financial stake in the game.
Since advertising tobacco and alcohol were banned from sport, I have no idea who sponsors cricket and who advertises with it. But ‘wokenomics’ has penetrated the board rooms of most major corporations and the excoriating cancel culture which accompanies it is used as powerful tool in the culture war. Without a shred of evidence to support this, I am sure that warning shots were fired over the bows of international cricket about what will not be put up with. Examples must be made pour discourager les autres and nothing less than zero tolerance will be tolerated.
If cricket and football (soccer for our American readers) are such festering cesspits of homophobia and racism, why don’t we simply cancel them? I guess too many people would lose too much money. The same Britain that tolerates and lauds the achievements of its immigrants is the same Britain that has shown little tolerance or understanding towards Ollie Robinson.
Opinions from the Unity News Network (UNN) editorial team & various contributors. | UNN always clearly distinguishes between news and opinion pieces and as an open minded outlet we publish views from a variety of people and organisation that do not necessarily reflect the views of UNN or its writers. Articles published under UNN Opinions are always opinion pieces and if published on behalf of a contributor will contain that authors name at the start of the piece.
