Bantering and sledging is a part of a lot of Sports and it is heavily on use specifically in Cricket and Football. Ever since that infamous Racism incident in USA, it has been advised to ignore such content and the players have been told to avoid getting into such incidents.
The subject has been totally banned in European countries but some cases still come into the fore. One such case of Racism that we all must have heard of was when England fans discarded Bukayo Saka, Marcus Rashford and Jadon Sancho for being black and the fans also blamed him for the loss.
One of England’s legendary sports personality and former Captain and opener for the Three Lions, Andrew Strauss recently asked the players to be aware of knowing when the line is crossed. Often during over heated sledging and bantering, someone can speak anything wrong in the heat of the moment.
Strauss gave the statement after an infamous incident took place in the English dressing room cricketer named Azeem Rafiq. The Pakistan born player told United Kingdom’s Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport that he became a subject of Racist banters by his fellow England team mates.
Azeem played for County outfit Yorkshire for over 10 years before getting picked for England. However, the Racist banter towards him had put him in a state of depression and his own life was in the line. On that regard, Andrew Strauss during a lecture at MCC Cowdrey session said that modern players should be very careful of what they say.
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Due to the emergence of franchise cricket, players of different races, religion and nationality are playing together and sharing dressing rooms. And that is why it gets even more important for the players to be aware. The incident with Azeem Rafiq tampered the image of England Cricket which Strauss highly condemned as a former player and a Board director.
