Ross Taylor Breaks Silence: Racism Still Prevalent in New Zealand Cricket

Ross Taylor Breaks Silence: Racism Still Prevalent in New Zealand Cricket

Ross Taylor Breaks Silence : The former batter reveals how he and other players have faced racism in New Zealand cricket. “For much of my career, I’ve been an anomaly—a brown face in a vanilla line-up,” Ross Taylor says in his new autobiography.

In his new autobiography, following his retirement from international cricket earlier this year, Ross Taylor shares a personal account of the game in New Zealand being ‘pretty white’, and that he has had to deal with racism within team dressing rooms. The game, which turned out to be quite polarizing in the public eye, may have always been seen as ‘banter’ by those involved.

Because of its lack of diversity, Cricket in New Zealand is often assumed to have played only Caucasians and has been a challenge for Brown people like Taylor. Given the limited representation of Polynesian people in the sport, it’s no surprise that Taylor sometimes thinks that team-mates or spectators assume he was Caucasian by accident.

“There is a conversation that goes on in dressing room hallways between teammates. One teammate often told me, ‘you’re a good half, Ross’. I was pretty sure I knew what they meant. Other players also had to put up with comments that dwelled on their ethnicity.”

In all probability, a white New Zealander listening to those sorts of comments would think ‘Oh, that’s okay, it’s just a bit of banter.’ But he’s hearing it as a white person and not directed at people like him. So there is no pushback; no one corrects them. Then the onus falls on the targets

You consider mentioning that incident only to find that it would be repetitive, futile and may damage your argument. You think about developing a thick skin and letting those words slide, but is that the right thing to do? Elsewhere, Taylor also wrote about experiences inside the New Zealand team environment which had been racially “insensitive”.

A spokesperson with NZ Cricket told the New Zealand Herald that they deplore racism, and are a staunch supporter to the ‘Give Nothing to Racism’ campaign. They were deeply disappointed when Ross was exposed to this kind of behaviour. We’ll definitely reach out and discuss this with Ross.

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