Our society is still affected by different forms of discrimination, and people still face problems from same. England cricket took a moment for standing tall against these forms of discrimination- racism, religious intolerance, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, ableism, and ageism in cricket.
Before the match between England and New Zealand began both the teams stood up wearing black T-Shirts on which the name of the religious practices was written. Joe Root also acknowledged the fact that last year brought a lot of things that were not justified.
“We will be taking a moment of unity at the start of the game,” Root said. “New Zealand will also be doing that. They are happy to work alongside us and support us in that.
“We know the start of last summer unearthed some ugly truths in society and in our sport. We have spent a lot of time talking about how we can better our game and how we can educate ourselves more. We have worked with the PCA and the ECB is trying to find ways of doing that and have done some workshops recently to try and make ourselves a bit more comfortable dealing with those issues.
“Throughout this summer, we will be looking at working with hopefully three projects where we can take the game to more diverse areas around the country where we can continue to look to grow the game and offer our help and support in doing that.
“We have spent a lot of time talking about this sort of thing, but this year is all about action. It’s about actually doing something about it.
“It has taken time. We wanted to make it really clear about how we are going to make a difference and keep bettering our sport.
“Hopefully this year we can really start to make a difference and keep that conversation current. We can make our game more diverse and make sure it is the game for everyone. We [must] do as much as we can in that regard to growing the game and make everyone feel comfortable playing cricket.”
