Former England captain, Andrew Strauss, has urged cricketers to avoid the dressing room banters to prevent the controversies like Azeem Rafiq’s fiasco. He had told UK’s Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport (DCMS) in November 2021 that the racist comments by his fellow cricketers and their actions had left him close to taking his own life.
“As we move forward together as a game with players of different genders, races, creeds and beliefs coming together, so the traditional macho, hierarchical, perhaps at times verging on bullying dressing-room banter will need to be softened to a culture that is more tolerant, understanding, welcoming and embracing of difference,” Strauss was quoted as saying by Sky Sports.
“The events over the last 18 months, whether they come from Yorkshire or elsewhere have shown we have a lot of work to do in this area, but the spirit of cricket demands this,” he added.
“The coming together of Brendon McCullum and Ben Stokes in May last year has shifted the game of Test cricket from its foundations and has asked some fundamental questions of the centuries-old accepted truths of the Test format,” Strauss concluded.
