As international cricket gears up to resume from summer of 2020, Veteran pacer James Anderson says that England will show solidarity if their West Indies counterparts pass any anti-racism comments during the matches.
The murder of George Floyd, an African-American un-armed man by the Minneapolis police in the United States has set off a global protest calling out racial discrimination. Following which, many athletes have spoken up about #BlackLivesMatter movement and some of them have also taken the knee as the sports industry slowly starts to get back on track and resume action amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. “It's been a very thought-provoking few weeks for everyone. It's made me do a lot of thinking,” said Anderson. The recent events have left him wondering if he had ‘turned a blind eye’ to the problems which were present in the sports industry throughout. “I'll try and support my team-mates if they do suffer any abuse but have I been active in supporting them?” said the 37-year-old cricketer.
West Indies captain Jason Holder said he will talk to the whole team before deciding if the WI players will also take the knee in support of the worldwide anti-racism movement which is happening during the test series in England.
“We definitely will have conversations as players about what we can do to make a stand. It's something that as players and a game we need to be more active with, it’s made me think about whether I've experienced racism on the cricket field. I couldn't think of any instances.” said Anderson. He also mentioned that he wasn’t there when Jofra Archer got abused in New Zealand back in 2019.
“The game in general as well - I saw the stat that there's one black player that's come through the state school system in county cricket. That's not okay. We need to actively make this game for everyone. It can't keep going the way it is. That's what I've been thinking about and is there more that I can do to help as a player,” he added.
