The predictably abysmal performance of the England cricket team in Australia over the last three weeks currently dominates discussion of what’s wrong with English cricket. A more insidious malaise has prompted the England and Wales Cricket Board to set up an Independent Commission for Equity to “examine questions of equity in relation to race, gender and class within cricket — including access and barriers to the sport and progression towards professional level cricket”.
The Commission was established following allegations of rampant and deep-seated racism at Yorkshire County Cricket Club (YCCC). Former Yorkshire spinner Azeem Rafiq told the Parliamentary Digital, Culture, Media & Sport Select Committee that he had faced repeated racist comments from senior players, which the club had done nothing to stop. Asked whether the club was institutionally racist, former YCCC chairman Roger Hutton replied: “I fear it falls into that definition”.
The spotlight on YCCC revealed past antisemitic remarks by two players at the centre of the racism storm. Former Yorkshire captain Andrew Gale was suspended as head coach for having sent a tweet in which he stated: “button it, yid”. He has since been sacked, as part of a clear-out of all 16 of the coaching staff. And racism whistle-blower Rafiq himself labelled a fellow cricketer as a “Jew” in a Facebook message for being reluctant to contribute towards the cost of a team dinner, adding: “‘How wrong is that? Only Jews do tht sort of shit ha”.
It is difficult to tell how widespread antisemitism is in the world of professional cricket. As Jack Williams noted in his book Cricket and Race, “The difficulties of defining Jewishness and the tiny number of those calling themselves Jews who have played county cricket complicates the task of gauging the extent of antisemitism in first-class cricket.”
When apologising for his actions, Rafiq pointed out, “I don’t think I’ve ever played with anyone Jewish”. The relative paucity of top-rank Jewish cricketers once prompted comedian Mike Yarwood to quip: “I was doing the smallest books in the world. Famous Jewish cricketers, Australian etiquette, that kind of thing”. An old JC cartoon pictured one of two Jewish men walking past a newspaper placard with the headline “ISRAEL BOYCOTT” commenting to the other: “Trust the ‘JC’ to find another Jewish cricketer”.
What can be said is that the existence and fear of antisemitism have cast a shadow over Jewish cricketers’ involvement in the higher levels of the sport. Fast bowler Norman Gordon was the first openly Jewish South African Test cricketer. The distinguished advocate Sir Sydney Kentridge QC (now aged 99) recalls that when Gordon made his Test debut the South African Jewish community “were very proud that a Jew was playing for their country”.
Not all shared their view. Gordon, who died in 2014 at the age of 103, told me that when he ran up to bowl the first ball on his Test debut, he heard a heckler in the crowd shout, “Here comes the Rabbi!”
“Fortunately, I took five wickets in that innings”, Gordon noted, “and that shut him up for the rest of the tour.”
Gordon was the leading wicket-taker on either side in the only Test series in which he played, against England in 1938-39. Many thought his bowling would thrive in England. In his autobiography, Sir Len Hutton stated that he had “little doubt that if the war had not intervened, Norman Gordon would have made a big name for himself had he toured England”. South Africa’s 1940 tour of England was cancelled because of the Second World War, and Gordon was not picked for the 1947 tour. Why not? Many years later, Gordon told me, “a friend of mine told me that he had heard from one of the tour selectors that [the South Africa and Sussex batsman] Alan Melville had told them not to select me as there might be antisemitism and unpleasantness in England and he thought it expedient to let me out of the tour. I am sure that my friend wouldn’t have told me if it wasn’t true. There was quite a bit of feeling about Jews even after the War in England.”
Although widely regarded as the most astute captain of his era, Percy Fender was never entrusted with the England captaincy. Leading England batsman Herbert Sutcliffe professed that he “could never understand why in his most successful years he was not England’s captain”. The reason was widely believed to be that Fender was, or was thought to be, Jewish. On his death in 1985, Frank Keating wrote: “He played in 13 Tests – indeed, he should have captained England regularly, many said, but he knew he never would when he overheard an MCC president at Lord’s referring to him as ‘the smarmy Jew boy’.” Fender denied that he had a Jewish background or that it would have told against him if he had. Nonetheless, his strikingly stereotypical Semitic appearance would have made him stand out in the 1920s. The cricketing authorities wanted England cricket captains who fitted the mould, who accorded with their preconceptions of what a captain should look like. Fender didn’t fit that mould for various reasons, of which perceived Jewishness may well have been one.
Seemingly out of a fear of antisemitism, several cricketers hid their Jewish heritage. Fred Susskind, who was educated at UCS in Hampstead but went on to play five Tests for South Africa on its 1924 tour of England, took pains not to publicise his Jewishness. Norman Gordon, who knew him well, told me Susskind “was Jewish but didn’t profess to be Jewish, didn’t admit to it. The South African papers never mentioned he was Jewish.” As I revealed in my JC article The truth about super Sid in 2017, Sid O’Linn, who played both cricket and football for South Africa, was in fact born Sydney Olinsky in 1927 in Oudtshoorn, a small town in the Cape where his father ran a kosher butchers. His change of surname enabled Sid to pass himself off as a non-Jew of seemingly Irish, rather than Jewish, origin. Derek Ufton, who had played both cricket for Kent and football for Charlton Athletic with O’Linn, told me: “Sid kept himself to himself. It was hard to get to know much about him. You have to remember that in South Africa at that time — he was from the Cape — you wouldn’t get into certain clubs if you had different blood in you.”
Antisemitism continues periodically to be reported in the cricketing establishment. In 1995, the commentator Henry Blofeld was censored by the Broadcasting Standards Council for transmitting “tasteless and racist” remarks when he stated that onlookers watching the match from the balcony of two buildings outside the ground at Headingley were in “the Jewish stand”, because they had avoided having to pay to watch the match. He later admitted that he “was mercifully not cast into the outer darkness I probably deserved”.
Charles Sales’ recent book The Covers Are Off: Civil War at Lord’s said that several MCC members detected a whiff of antisemitism in the way in the MCC dealt with Charles Rifkind, the property developer. When in 1999, to the club’s chagrin, he purchased a strip of land at Lord’s Nursery End, Lord Grabiner QC asserted: “I’m sure MCC were very determined… to make sure that the Jew would not make any money out of this, to be perfectly blunt… It wouldn’t be a difficult thing to slip into the conversation. ‘You don’t want any of these Jews making any money’ would be the kind of approach.”
Whilst both of the incidents recently revealed at YCCC took place more than a decade ago, they are likely to reflect a wider malaise and should now prompt the cricketing world to ensure that the fight to eradicate racism in cricket specially targets antisemitism. The newly formed Commission should investigate the prevalence of antisemitism and any barriers which Jewish cricketers may face.
Daniel Lightman is a QC and the co-author of ‘Cricket Grounds from the Air’. He has written a number of articles on Jewish cricketers
