Game Must Adopt Zero Tolerance On Racist Hate Speech

If you aren’t listening to the BBC Tailenders podcast, you should be. Equal parts irreverent and self deprecatory, co-hosts Greg James, Jimmy Anderson and Felix White are succeeding in their mission of bringing new people into our game through the fun of the show.

- Adam Collins

The wonderful community they have built over the last 18 months is founded on inclusivity: if you want to be part of it – if you want to be a ‘Tailender’ – then you’re straight onto the team.

Fandom has a funny way of expressing itself and Tailenders is no different. On England’s tour of Sri Lanka last year, touring supporters started hanging up banners sporting the show’s hashtag, inspired by The Smiths’ 1987 Top 40 hit, Shoplifters of the World: #Tailenders OfTheWorldUniteAndTakeOver.

By Boxing Day, a sheet with the motto appeared at the Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG). A month later, the goal is now to get signs spotted in every active Test ground – and Bramall Road, where England played a Test in 1902. Once again, this is all about welcoming as many people along for the ride as possible.

Yet the timing of the launch of that joyous campaign made for a troubling contrast to what was on display in Perth last week at a Big Bash game, and the limp inaction that followed by those who should have known better. There, during a Perth Scorchers home match at the new multi-purpose stadium, a trio of garden-variety white supremacists unfurled a banner of their own, reading “Its [sic] ok to be white.”